‘Down in the Depths’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

Down in the Depths

(She nearly dies when it happens.)

Dragged beneath the waves, thrown about by the harsh currents caused by the sudden violent storm. Her lungs burn as she fights against the wreckage of her former ship, nerves sharp with fear, like a knife pressed against her jugular. The threat of an almost assured death made her want to lie still and at the same time claw and kick with all her might. Her instincts chose the latter.

It is only now, her chest aching with the effort of keeping in her last breath, that she curses her confidence; her years of sailing with her father and brothers, she blames those feelings and memories for her lack of a life-jacket. Or anything else that would have aided her in staying above water.

Clinging to the last breath trying to claw its way out of her throat, she continues to kick and swim against the water that’s grasping and pulling at her limbs, tugging her now unbound hair, curling around her ankles and wrists; invisible chains that will drag her down if she lets up for even a moment. Adrenaline is her only hope, but even that is being steadily washed away. 

Her efforts are proven worthless in the end. As good a swimmer as she is, as much as she tries to reach for the surface, her struggles only manage to slow her descent, to keep the surface just in sight as she’s tossed about. Ropes tangle around her limbs, slippery bindings that send her racing mind into a panic and cause her to thrash even harder, which only serves to entrap her further.

She knows these waters, has lived and grown in them, and as she sinks, she remembers the tales her father and other sailors had told her; of the men who fell into the depths during a storm, and knows the next time her body touches land, her soul will not be with it.

She doesn’t know how much time passes, the meaning of minutes and hours blur together in her spinning, pounding head, but eventually, inevitably; her body forces her to take a breath. Her throat, nose and chest burn as saltwater rushes in. Bubbles slip past her darkening lips to float lazily to the surface. She gasps and chokes, unable to close her mouth as she struggles for air, struggling to expel the horrid fluid, and so claws at her own throat, at her gaping mouth, salt stinging across the marks she leaves.

Of course, that doesn’t help, it doesn’t stop her own body from rebelling against her dimming mind, the damage is done and slowly, so very slowly, this child of fifteen, drowns. 

Darkness creeps across her vision as her struggles falter, shivering, she succumbs to the elements, the waters she had loved and trusted, claim her. The echo of movement, as well as the circling currents, keeps her from stilling completely, however. Limbs twitch with the fading fire of her life as the water continues to rush past and around her, twisting her limbs and tangling her hair. Deeper and deeper she slips, the frigid water that surrounds her stealing the last of her body’s warmth, and finally her eyes shut. One last bubble floats from her parted lips, and it is the last sight her eyes take in before the dark cold waters claim her.

No. (Calls a voice, a melody so familiar it hurts.) This is not where the story ends. 

Without warning, hot white light bursts like a bolt of lightning across her vision. She gasps, her eyes wide and unseeing as they roll back in her head. Cold limbs jerk painfully as somehow, more water pours and swirls in her open mouth and throat. Her abused lungs jerk in her ribcage, threatening to burst from her chest and swim back to the surface for the air they so desperately needed.

Remember. (Calls the voice. It is a command she knows she could reject, but--) Please remember, little one. Please.

She surrenders and remembers.

She sees memories from another’s eyes, for they cannot be hers. She sees places she has never seen before yet strike deeply in her soul; she knows these places, as well as she knows her own seaside home. She sees a vast sea, not unlike the one she sees every morning from her balcony window, except there, the water is bluer and shimmers like gemstones beneath a blinding sun. There are no boats, no houses, not even her own, there are no distant sounds of civilization, she is alone. She stands by the shore, surrounded by nothing but vast greenery and the soft warm sand fading into the water. 

Then suddenly, she is rushing beneath the waves, sight as clear as on a sunny day, webbed fingers twisting stones and cradling flowers, hair swirling around like a cloud of crimson, the flash of red-orange scales and sharp fins melting away to pale skin beneath.

Her oxygen deprived brain tells her these images cannot be real, that these are merely the wishes of a dying child, fantastical dreams meant to soothe her frightened mind as she drowns, but her heart, her soul says yes. Yes, this is something you had experienced, this happened.

You have lived before, and your life will not end here. (Swears the voice, sounding almost like her mothers. She believes it.) Remember child; survive as you had so long ago.

Knowledge floods her mind, the force of it causing her head to snap back in the water, her back arching with it. Images flash across her eyes; glistening scales spreading across her own pale skin, the sharp snap of bone as her body shifted, the gentle brush of crimson hair against sensitive gills, fins waving from the sides of her head, webbed fingers reaching out, powerful fin-laced legs kicking, pushing her onward deeper an deeper into the blue.

She cannot fight these sensations, nor does she truly want to; they promise freedom and power and survival. The strange, yet familiar energy surges, scorching her frozen veins, promising her the strength to return home. She wouldn’t have refused even if she could have. 

Fresh agony strikes anew all over her body, rushing through her in seemingly never-ending waves as she screams silently, the water swallowing the sounds and bubbles rushing from her mouth, carrying her cries in their soft spheres as they rise higher and higher in clusters.

As the final wave fades, she gasps again, and starts at the realization that she can breathe. She blinks rapidly and gulps down water and air instinctively until her vision returns, and she finds herself still staring into the murkiness of the ocean. She coughs, saliva and water and bubbles mixing as her hands fly to her abused throat. She feels large fragile slits with waving slips of flesh opening and closing with every breath on the sides of her neck and for a moment, she wonders if she has already died and this is the afterlife; where she will remain trapped beneath the waves, bound to never-ending water for eternity. She’s not sure if that would be a reward or punishment. 

She prods at the slits, (because they can’t be gills, she can’t have remembered a life where she had shapeshifted into a sea creature. Where she had grown into an adult in the wild. Where she had died –) and tries to recall if she had really torn open her own throat before she succumbed, or if she remembered a piece of debris cutting across the tender flesh before the darkness had swallowed her. 

She couldn’t. 

Thoughts whirling and spiraling down, threatening to drag her deeper into a more frightening and crushing dark, fear rising like an underwater volcano waiting to erupt, she stops. She hovers in the water, taking deep impossible breaths, and counts down from ten to calm herself as her mother had taught her, shutting her wide roaming eyes from the murky dimness. All is quiet, except for the dim roar of the currents and her own uneven breathing. She strains to hear anything other than the maddening forcefully calm silence, her ears twitch (something that’s never happened before, not that anything in the last while has happened before but still) and she raises a hand to one, immediately jerking away from the thing on the side of her head that is clearly not an ear. 

Her eyes remain shut tight as she takes more deep breaths, and slowly, shakily, she returns her hand to the space where her ear should be, only to brush over what is clearly some type of ornate fin that has replaced her ear. Which isn’t possible. 

(Except that is it, because she feels it.)

Both hands rise, fingers prodding and rubbing against the new delicate flesh, at the small smooth fins that twitch under the barest amount of contact. Retracting her hand, she takes another deep breath, her deepest one yet, and concentrates on the feeling of the water entering her gills – god she has gills and she feels ones on her sides too, and longer fins twitching on her calves, dear god what is happening — the wonderful sensation of her continuing existence, the sweet taste of oxygen and the expulsion of water. 

She rests for a time, rocked gently by the currents, limbs brushing against the wreckage of her boats shattered remains still floating around her, breathing deeply. How long she stays like that she’s not sure, she only knows enough time passes for her to get used to this new version of breathing she now has to deal with. 

For a brief, hysterical moment, she marvels at the transformation; she’s a creature of the sea, something she’s dreamt of before, which does nothing but make her believe even more that this is either an elaborate dream, or that she’s really dead.

As if her emotions were waiting for that thought alone, she’s sucker punched with the vivid recent memory of how she came to be in this situation. The sudden storm – loosing control of her boat, though she’d fought with all her might – the slippery rope tearing across her palms, slipping from her grasp as her sails whipped wildly in the wind – the water rising and falling into her eyes, saltwater surging from below, nearly causing her to loose her footing – that final wave backed by the loudest boom of thunder she’d ever heard and a bright flash of lightning – and finally, being thrown from her deck, that brief moment of weightlessness, before she fell into the water with a back-breaking splash, where she’d then been dragged deeper and deeper and – 

Panic surges up in her again, the ghost sensation of drowning accompanied by the water circulating in her throat and chest causes her to choke and claw at her throat again. The twitching gills frighten her even more, and with her pulse pounding in her head, a racing, consuming lub dub, she loses herself, another soundless scream bursting from her lips. She screams and cries, the space behind her eyes burning almost as much as her abused throat as her emotions push and pound her skull like the previous storm.

Eventually, she manages to calm herself, her mental logic forces its way to the forefront of her whirling mind, instructing her and pulling her back from the brink of madness and into a cool numbness. (The voice sounds like the rumble of her father’s, which helps more than she’d care to admit.) 

After she gains just enough control, she decides to try to get to the surface before she has another panic attack, which when she opens her eyes again and looks up, she can faintly see far above her. Past the remaining drifting wood and floating supplies she’d had on board, consistent dull light flickers, reflecting off the water, the storm seeming to have passed. She attempts to move up, only to be reminded of the debris wrapped around her. How had see forgotten that?

With a growl she digs her palms into the sandy bottom – oh wow she’s that deep, that’s not good, how did she get that deep without noticing – shakes the panic clawing up her throat and shoves off the bottom, thrusting up with a powerful kick. Her efforts are cut short by the rope still wrapped around her form, caught tighter from her sudden movement. She spends the next while twisting and unwinding the rope that had ensnared her, the cause of her eventual loss against the water. Slipping free with a smirk, flashing large sharp teeth unknowingly, she turns and levels a bright-eyed glare at the outlined remains of her former vessel.

For a split second, she mourns the destroyed boat, then the rage and horror at her previous drowning rears its head and she suddenly couldn’t care less about the shattered collection of wood and metal. Not even the thought of her parents almost certain anger and disappointment can change her feelings. 

With a mighty kick, she turns and swims up towards her goal. She wastes no time with further thought as she swims. For now, she will ignore the changes, ignore how easily she moves through the water, how free and powerful she feels as she races towards the surface, how much a part of her is saddened by the idea of dry land. She will ignore everything; she will waste this unbelievable and impossible opportunity over the chance of returning home and will hope against hope that all this will be but a strange dream. That she will wake up in her bed to the sounds of birds, the lapping of water and the warm voices of her family.

All she wants to do, is go home.

So she swims, racing towards the image of her mother’s warm embrace and brilliant smile, to her father’s steadfast kindness and endless strength, to her two older brother’s contagious laughter and unwavering support. To the house by the seaside that her father had built with her mother, to her family’s special cove hidden by jagged rock, untouchable unless you were willing to get wet, and the beach she and her brothers had been raised upon. The sun-warmed sand that had embraced her and cradled her toes when she’d explored the edges of its blue companion. The pale grains that brought her treasure from the depths and let themselves be thrown about and reformed into structures that made sense only to the mind of a child.

She rises with a splash, the wind carried across the waters surface causes goosebumps to rise on her pale skin. She shivers, resisting the urge to return below, to the blue that seemed so much warmer now. After being under so long, the light of the oncoming sunrise burns her eyes, but she doesn’t care. She just squints, lips stretching until her cheeks hurt from smiling and simply floats, shutting her eyes as she breathes the fresh cool air. 

Then, she turns, gaze immediately set towards the beach, to the bright outline of her home, and kicks off with a loud splash. She swims, racing across the blue with ease and does not stop until she feels the sand beneath her feet, sucking at her toes in welcome. Her chest clenches, lungs burning and pulse roaring in her ears. Still, she smiles. 

Slowly, limbs heavy with exhaustion and relief, she drags herself onto the beach, nails clawing into the wet sand before collapsing upon the soft dry powder further on, managing to roll onto her back before her strength gives out, because as grateful as she is to be back, having sand in your mouth is still disgusting. She lays there, breathing (god breathing is so wonderful) and staring up into the beautiful sky lightening to that brilliant whit dotted blue she loved as the waves nipped at her heels. Then, she hears someone call her name. Loudly.

“Marina!” She rolls back onto her belly, raising herself onto her forearms, turning her head to the direction of the familiar voice. Somehow, her smiles widens even more as she watches her mother sprint down the path and across the grass and sand towards her. Marina rises, to her shaking knees, and watches her mother’s unbound wavy red hair whip behind her, green eyes bright with concern, the same color she alone had inherited.

“Oh, my baby.” Her mother cries, eyes ringed red and beginning to water anew, before dropping to her knees and skidding in the sand, her calloused hands reach out, hovering, uncertain, bright dilated eyes darting over her child’s form, searching for injuries. Finding none, she wraps her hands around Marina’s trembling arms, leaning close, searching the younger’s face, as if she would find her answers there. 

“What happened?! You’ve been gone for hours, you had us all so worried!” Her mother cries, throwing her gaze briefly over Marina’s shoulder, searching the horizon, nose scrunching when she finds no trace of her daughters’ small boat before returning to her daughter’s face, brow furrowed. She opens her mouth, only to close it again as she takes in Marina’s wobbling pale lips.

“…Mom.” Is all that manages to pass Marina’s lips before her voice cracks. Tears burn in her own eyes and begin flowing down her pale cheeks. Marina trembles, opening her mouth to explain – to offer something – only to find she can manage no more than squeaks and whimpers. Her mother manages a strained smile and caresses Marina’s dripping sandy hair, and that is where the dam breaks. 

With a violent cry, Marina collapses against her mother, clutching with white knuckles at the dry cloth of her shirt, pressing her face into her mother’s soft chest. Sobs bubbling from her throat as warm strong arms slip around and hold her close. 

It’s not until she’s been led back inside, carried in her mother’s unwavering grip and set down on one of the kitchen chairs, upon which her mother races off for towels that she notices the gills and fins are gone. Her flesh is once again scale less and pale, made even paler by the cold. Only goosebumps and freckles paint her skin now. She bares no marks, as if the last few hours hadn’t happened. (She’s not sure what to do with these waring feelings of relief and disappointment. She’s not sure if she wants to know.)

Marina whips her head up at the sound of shuffling feet in the doorway leading deeper into the house and immediately sees the heavy shadowed eyes of her father. She opens her mouth to call his name, but all that passes is another strained whimper. But she knows he knows, sees the look in his eye that tells her; any explanation can wait. Her eyes burn and spill again as her father – her big, strong, never-faltering, wonderful father – marches over and pulls Marina into his arms, encircling her with his furnace warmth and his familiar sea salt and wood smell as she sobs anew. 

That’s how her mother finds them; clutching at each other as if letting go would shatter them both. (Marina misses the look her father shoots her mother, misses the worry and steel in her father’s gaze. She doesn’t see the hopeful fear in her mother’s eyes.) Her father will back off long enough for her mother to wrap her in thick towels and start scrubbing at her hair and skin before her brother’s appear at her sides. A whimper of relief will sound – because she is home, she is safe, her family will know what to do. They have to – and she will be nearly knocked over by the rush of arms coming to hold her.

------

Later, she will tell her mother and father what happened; she will sob and bark and tell her terrible fantastical tale with trembling lips as she fights the agonising panic clawing at the bone cage of her ribs. She will sob between her brother’s arms and will be talked through another panic attack.

 Later still, Marina will miss the way her mother’s eyes gloss over with sorrow of a different kind, as similar bright green orbs shine with guilt and anger as Marina’s helped into a quick shower and wrapped in soft and warmed blankets before being put to bed. Her brother’s sandwiching her between them. Marina will not be awake to hear her mother’s curses and cries as her father holds her close. She will not hear the words she mother spits in sudden, heartbreaking anger:

“We should have told her sooner. Damn the rules – she needs to know.” 

Her father won’t have the will to disagree.

Even later, when daylight breaks again, Marina will wake alone and be forced to bitterly accept the reality of her near-death experience. She will lay in bed and breathe deeply, for that will be all she can do until the nightmares (memories) of drowning fade deep enough into her head for her to shake off numbing hands of paralysis. Then she will remember the thrill and horror or her transformation, and her siblings will find her curled on her side sobbing because of emotions she doesn’t understand. Emotions she’s not sure are her own.

Marina will be sat on the couch between her brother’s as her mother tells her own fantastical tale. Of her mother’s hidden bloodline. Of a cycle of reincarnation and a prophecy her mother had always known by heart and hated with all her being. (Marina will try to hate them too, but deep in her soul she knows her anger will not last. The voice from before assures it.) One that has chosen Marina to one day set out and accomplish seemingly impossible tasks and lose things she does not yet have. A tragic and horrifying story Marina has no choice but to participate in. (But that is a tale for another time.)

Her mother will tell – and show – that she has the same abilities. Her mother will tell Marina that they are different, her brothers carry no power, and she will be given a name – sea shapeshifters. For while she may appear human, and will look as such down to her bones, her blood will always be called to the water, will change for it. Whether she agrees or not.

--------

For the present moment though, she will simply allow herself to be a scared child attempting to drawn strength and reason from her family’s love, from the warm bodies encircling her as her mother and father pepper her skin with wet kisses. 

Here and now, tomorrow is distant. (Even if her memories, new an ancient, are not.)

Rachel Racette, Metis, born 1999, in Balcarres, Saskatchewan. Interested in creating her own world and characters. Writes science-fiction and fantasy. She has always loved books of fantasy and science fiction as well as comics. Lives with her supportive family and cat, Cheshire. Lives vicariously in fantasy settings of her own making. Website: www.racheldotsdot.wordpress.com Twitter: Rachel S Racette - Author

‘Dead Mango Trees Go to Heaven’

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d's universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s poetry and art collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024, Forthcoming), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Dead Mango Trees Go to Heaven

I sat on the floor with my arms wrapped around my knees, feeling the coolness of the crimson tiles under my bare feet. Freshly sucked lychee seeds lay clustered atop a copy of Prothom Alo, the ink of its headlines oozing into the juices that dampened the front page. A slumberous silence blanketed the summer afternoon, perforated only by the television’s dim murmurs and the faint grating of a saw against wood.

“Can you come to lunch tomorrow, Ma?”

Her whisper of a voice almost melted into the rhythmic sawing outside. It was the first thing she had said aloud in some time.

“Yes, Nanu.” I hoisted myself off the floor, making my way to the adjoining kitchen. “Yes, I can.” Letting the lychee seeds slide off into the trash, I twisted the tap and let a smooth stream of water drum onto the steel sink. My palms lingered in its coolness, a brief respite from Khulna’s throbbing heat. The dark curls my grandmother had gifted my mother and my mother me clung to my forehead. I loved my hair, and I loved that I had gotten it from them. I didn’t know if I had ever told them that. But I had a feeling they knew.

As a child, I used to stoop by the door and peek in, hoping to catch a glimpse inside the bustling, steamy, seemingly cavernous kitchen, back when it had been the beating heart of my grandparents’ home. The whistling of Calcutta tea kettles and sizzling of over-easy eggs in the morning; the wispy tendrils of smoke reaching for the ceiling and scraping of knives against cutting boards that soundtracked the readying of a family meal; the hushed, giggling exchanges of local gossip as pots were scrubbed clean after dinner. Habib Uncle, a smiling man who always smelled of molasses and somewhat resembled Bob Dylan with a Khulna tan - and he leaned into it too, the fluffy-headed scamp, with his pearwood harmonica that he could barely even play - used to slip me orange slices whenever I had tried to peer in.

I could almost still hear it all, even as the sawing outside grew louder by the minute. The kettles from Calcutta had been long sold off. Habib Uncle had died of cirrhosis four years ago.

“Hot day, huh, Nanu?” I returned to the living room, two glasses of water in hand. My grandmother responded with a blink and a blank stare. Her hands gripped the sides of her wheelchair, the veins running up her forearms prominent and blue against her graying flesh. Her upper lip quivered ever so slightly, as if she was constantly teetering on the precipice of breaking into tears.

“See, I knew you should’ve let Umna Auntie help give you a bath this morning,” I chided her, placing one glass on the floor and the other on the table next to her. “Just let me know when you want some lunch, okay? I think the cabbage is almost ready.”

Her orna had slipped down her bony shoulders. Two decades ago, she would have playfully wrapped the same shawl around me as I giggled underneath its soft, checkered canopy of cloth. It had seemed gigantic back then, like I could get lost within its green and golden folds, enmeshed within its faint scent of citrus. Today, it could barely stay on her shrinking frame.

“Ma,” she said finally, speaking up a little over the sound of the sawing. “Can you come to lunch tomorrow?”

My grandmother’s Bangla was faint, fragmented, and faltering. She hesitated between words, her crinkling voice briefly trailing off before making its way back; with each pause, I could almost see her eyes dancing aimlessly across the floor, as if grappling for the direction her question had been heading in.

“Yes, Nanu. Of course I can.”

She seemed content for a little while.

“Ma,” she spoke again. “What is that sound?”

The caustic grinding of steel on wood had indeed grown more aggressive, as if repeatedly catching on something and tearing right through it. The sawing, once smooth and systematic, now sounded like an act of violence.

“Nothing, nanu. Let’s turn this up.” I reached for the remote to the TV, a thick gray box that made everything on its fuzzy screen look like it was older than the country of Bangladesh. Not too tall a hurdle, given that most of the furniture in this house was. Heck, the house was considered old when my mother’s first cries bounced off its walls, and that was the year of the war. The television, five decades and the birth of a nation later, hadn’t budged. It was on this screen that my grandparents had listened to the midnight declaration of war as the first tanks began rolling down the street outside; had scanned maps and tracked the continuous fighting to determine when it was safe to get baby formula for my infant mother; had read the name of Nanu’s brother on a list of soldiers whose bodies had been identified; had watched as the first flag of independent Bangladesh was unfurled from rooftops nationwide. It was on this screen that my mother had grown up watching Bangla dubs of Star Trek and, thirty years later, I watched the English reruns. A series of framed photographs lining the top of the television, reaching across generations and the color spectrum, showed my grandmother, my mother, and me each in our early twenties. If the world around it had changed, the television certainly hadn’t noticed.

“How’s this, Nanu?” I asked, landing on a channel airing a wildlife documentary. I turned, and my grandmother’s eyes weren’t on the screen at all.

“I don’t like the sound, ma,” she whispered. Her gaze was fixed on me.

“Nanu -”

She lifted her hand off the arms of her seat, and I watched its slow, shaky climb to meet mine. The warmth of her colorless grasp was so startling that my wrist almost jerked back in reflex. The softness of her palm pressed my fingers into a fist and held it there.

“They’re cutting down the tree, Ma.”

The last time my grandmother had been able to hold my hand like this, she had still had her smile. It had been a crooked and toothy and pure smile, one that felt like the sun peeking through the clouds just to look at you. It had been a little lopsided to the left, just like mine and my mother’s.

“They’re cutting down your tree. You live there, Ma.”

But time had changed her face. Her skin sagged as if slowly melting off of her skeleton. Her eyes, perpetually glazed over in silent exhaustion, drifted to the floor even as she faced me. Her lips were pursed in a tight, thin line. 

“They have to, Nanu. They need the space.”

The sawing lacerated the air with its unruly, arrhythmic screeches. Barbaric sounds that could not and should not be natural.

“No,” she said simply, her voice strained and guttural. Her hand, clasped around my fist, shook to and fro. “No, it’s your tree, Ma.”

“It’s okay, Nanu.” I reached for her other hand, but she squeezed the arm of her wheelchair in a quivering grip that drained all color from her wrist. Her mouth crumpled, and she began blinking profusely. I grabbed her head and pressed it against my stomach just as she released her bated breath in a hauntingly unfamiliar cry, a sound I had never heard her make. An almost animal sound, wrenched from her lungs and strangled by heaving sobs. I slipped my fingers into her hair, staring at the wall as her face trembled against my ribs. “It’s alright.”

The sawing seemed to have grown deafening by now. It was impossibly loud and ridiculously close.

“Tell them to stop, Ma,” she begged, her words almost swallowed by choked whimpers. “You live there.”

I refused to take my eyes off the wall. She pulled aimlessly on the sides of my shirt as the sawing dug into our ears, refusing to subside.

“I don’t live there, Nanu. No one does.”

The sawing cut into my head, my neck, my chest, all tightening in convulsions of agony. I wrapped my arms around Nanu’s face. The blades couldn’t get to her.

“You live there, Ma.”

The horrible screeches crescendoed, enveloping us in the unforgiving wailing of a tree being gradually torn from limb to limb. The sawing was now screaming - piercing death cries that rattled the windows.

“Ma,” she uttered, but the rest of her words were cut off by a noiseless snap that plunged the world into momentary silence. For a vanishing moment, every sound stopped. The hollow, lifeless thud that came after sounded distant and decisive. 

I cradled my grandmother’s head, listening to the sobs of her soul seeping out of her body.

*

I sat on the soil with my arms wrapped around my knees, feeling the coolness of the grassy dirt under my bare feet. In the subdued moonlight, the garden looked black. The leafy canopy I used to disappear into had been razed, the ghosts of my childhood lurking among the headless stumps scattered around me. The winding gravel pathway my grandfather had carved with his bare hands now belonged to weeds, vines, and debris. The single lamppost in the dead center of the garden, the humming glow of which used to illuminate our walks here after big dinners, had melted into the dark.

Against the moonlight, the dead mango tree was a looming sentinel, a leafless cadaver towering above the other occupants of the garden. Its lower branches had been amputated, including the one that had been sawed off this afternoon, the husk of which looked like it had already begun its slow, rotting descent into the dirt. I hadn’t spoken to the developers in some time, but I figured the rest of the tree would be gone by the end of June. Half the garden already was.

Even in the dark, I could see the shallow, grainy patch in front of the tree where my mother’s grave had been. We had been given about a month to exhume her remains before the developers began their work. If we had known we would have to sell the property so much sooner than expected, maybe we wouldn’t have buried her here in the first place, although that wasn’t a very productive train of thought at this point. I wished we could’ve kept her here longer. At least until she had seeped into the soil and there was nothing left to dig up and haul to a cemetery she had never set a living foot in. For what it was worth, she had been buried at the base of the tree for most of Nanu’s decline, so she hadn’t had to see the worst of it. She had left under the impression that her own mother still knew who she was.

The sandy patch seemed bizarrely small, like a grave for a child. How my mother had ever slept there was beyond me. I almost felt the need to apologize for the discomfort. Sorry, Ma, we should’ve dug a bigger hole. But I liked to believe that for her, it was like coming home. She was, after all, back under the tree whose branches she used to swing from as a child, her little feet scraping the very same dirt and soil. My grandfather used to talk about the tree as if it were the house’s sibling - “They grew up like this,” he would say, holding up two fingers pressed firmly together - and it felt only right to call it family. My mother had been buried with family.

I lay my hand where she had been. I wish I could say I felt something - some warmth, some stirring, a disembodied heart beating deep in the dirt - but the ground was cold, dry, and dead. As if no one had ever been there at all.

I’ll be back, Ma. I didn’t know if I said that aloud. But I had a feeling she knew.

The house was dark apart from a single window illuminated by rapid flickers of color. As I slipped into the living room, leaving the door ajar behind me, the murmurs of the television were almost imperceptible. Nanu sat in her rocking chair as it rolled to and fro with rhythmic groans, her head bobbing along with it. Her chest ballooned with each sharp breath and sank with each whistling exhale. Nanu’s dozing face was cast in the alternating green, orange, and pink of the television’s pale glow. The February issue of Prothom Alo, the same edition she read every day, had slipped out of her fingers and lay face down on the floor.

I sat down next to her, her hand dangling inches from my face. The television was on the same news channel she used to watch with my grandfather every night until one of them was snoring away. My mother used to tell me how she wasn’t supposed to watch the news until she was older, and how this had only encouraged her to sneak in and watch from the floor whenever both of them had dozed off. She now watched me do the same from her picture on top of the television, tucked in between her mother and daughter. In the room’s dimness, one could be forgiven for thinking we were the same young woman who had been excused from ageing for half a century. Our flowing black curls framed our angular faces and rested on our shoulders, slightly pinched together the same way. Although I had seen neither in a long time, our smiles looked the same, too: the toothy grin that was a little lopsided to the left.

“Ma.”

The snoring had stopped. Nanu’s hands stirred next to my face. 

“Go back to sleep, Nanu. I’m sorry.” I rose to leave. She raised her hand, stretching out her empty palm, and I paused. 

“Have you had dinner, Ma?” Her voice was low and groggy.

“Yes, Nanu.”

“Will you sleep soon?”

“Yes, Nanu.”

She fell silent. Her palm was quivering. She looked at her outstretched hand for a moment, then raised her head, meeting my eyes. I placed my hand in hers, and she closed her fingers around it. 

“Do you know my name, Nanu?”

She continued staring at my hand in hers. Her orna had once again slipped down her shoulders. In the fleeting colors of the television, she looked white, then red, then green. Her brow creased as she seemed to study the top of my hand, running her thumb gently along my skin.

It’s okay. I didn’t know if I said that aloud. But I had a feeling she knew.

“Ma,” she spoke finally. “Can you come to lunch tomorrow?”

She opened up her fingers. My hand didn’t budge. I wanted to soak in the warmth of her palm for as long as time would allow. 

“Yes, Nanu. Of course I can.”

From my angle, it was hard to tell, but it almost looked as if she smiled. It was a little lopsided to the left.

Adeeb Chowdhury is a 22-year-old aspiring writer from Chittagong, Bangladesh. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, where his written works of fiction and nonfiction have received the 2023 Feinberg Undergraduate Research Prize, 2024 Skopp Award on the Holocaust, 2024 North Star’s Best Nonfiction Writing Award, 2024 James Augustus Wilson Award on an African-American Topic, among others. His personal essays and nonfiction papers have been selected for preservation on the SUNY Open Access Repository (SOAR), a collection of notable work by students and faculty. He has also written extensively for publications such as Brown History Magazine, Pluto Literary Magazine, and Shuddhashar Publishing House, which received the 2016 Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award from the Association of American Publishers. Adeeb works as an investment advisor representative in Binghamton, New York and is also a weightlifting enthusiast.

‘Monsieur!’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

Monsieur!

Up at the crack of dawn, pays homage to the Sun, splashes water on his face and sets out. Tea nor water; brush nor comb. Perched on the saddle, heading out. Jacket, helmet and a cycling suit. In the age when everyone owns a car, a nondescript bicycle and its countless repairs of the break-handle-puncture trinity is all he bothers himself with. Indeed, Monsieur and his boundless majesty! 

Each morning, after he’s strangled the bicycle for a couple hours, he dives into kitchen. Is there a dearth of servants, you’d ask? Non, sir! ‘Why trouble others?’ he’d say. Bageuette, croissant, café au lait, bon apetit! And locks himself up indoors right after. Besotted with changes in life due any moment now. Like before. Speaks of Paris and its many Rue with a glint in his eyes. As though he’d mapped them all on his one visit years ago. Tongue starts rolling the R’s. Rue de la hue, mon cher – stuff only he can make sense of.

Not that he speaks often. But seems particularly invested in the language of trees and its leaves. On a morning he supposedly ran down a butterfly with his bicycle, he spent an hour wailing on the side of the street. ‘How could I, mon cheri?’, ‘A cold-blooded murder! A life stolen!’ he’d go on. ‘Wait,’ I said, ‘supposedly? Why didn’t you turn back and check if it actually died?’ ‘Couldn’t find the strength. I must repent. I shall fast over the weekend,’ he declared. About right, I thought. Pestering yourself might revive the supposedly-dead insect. At any rate, when he eats, he barely does. Neither does he stay back a second more when finished. To find out what everyone else’s up to. Nope, no chance. His lean frame disappears in a flash.

Won’t visit the family garden or their village farms. Won’t splurge on fuel, driving around aimlessly. Won’t even be cross with a servant. A proponent of modern thought, Monsieur hates orthodoxy like the plague. ‘No one’s the servant, no one the owner, we’re all equal,’ he proclaims. Detests theft; advocates fervently for the upright. Suppressing someone is out of question. 

‘Whatever little we may have – is all yours. You must look after it all, soon,’ his father called for him and declared. 

‘Pray, don’t trap me in worldliness. This isn’t for me,’ he says and storms off on his antique palace on wheels. For the empty streets. No chateau, no heir!

Alright. Don’t be the caretaker. Maybe find a job? But the boss man’s reprimand never sat well with Monsieur. Undue criticism or uncalled for behaviour never got his approval. Doesn’t have enough perils or financial troubles to turn him into a Yes man. How does one explain to a man of his ilk, that this is just the unwritten code of the society – the social fabric, if you will. Anger trickles down one to another; now foes, now chums; a rebuke this moment, camaraderie the next – I mean, that’s not the sort of stuff one explicitly lists out to the other! Such stuff just exists and flourishes. Since time immemorial. Now, now, don’t you get so worked up, Monsieur! But such stuff doesn’t sit well with him either. He packed his stuff, cleared his desk and handed in his papers on his way out. Of course, the Boss Man couldn’t care less – any man worth his salt would’ve hung his head and stayed; good riddance, the man was a temp at best, he thought. Of course, Boss Man returned to the said temp’s door twice, but Monsieur’s flat refusal couldn’t be overturned. It’s set in stone. 

Been ages since he last cut his hair. Or beard. The salon master waits anxiously for that fine morning when Monsieur shall grace his small outlet with his highness’ presence. And give him a chance to play with the scissors that lies rusting in a corner. Or gift Monsieur’s moustache the handlebars it deserves. When he roams the street with a swagger after, everyone knows there was only one man in the whole village who coulda-done-it. The latter can then step out his house, comforted with knowledge that soon there’d be people queuing out front. The former could glance at the newspaper and explain with intrinsic details to entertain the said queue. The outlet could turn into a franchisee overnight, even, but Monsieur – has ruined his earnest business plans. 

Doesn’t fancy clean shoes or slick suits. No wining-dining or Cuban cigars. No hedonism. Character purer than water, top notch behaviour, no arrogancy or greed. Can’t tell the boundaries of his land, has no need for a woman. Many a suitress and their fathers had to return empty-handed. ‘I can’t handle these relations,’ he’d say. What does that even mean, one may scratch their head and ask? What’s one got to do to handle – these things pretty much handle themselves! ‘Don’t make me responsible for another human, now.’ What responsibility – who in this godforsaken world considers themselves responsible for another? People come and go as they please. But you can count on Monsieur to string a necklace of excuses.

‘Why must you while your life alone? And how?’ The wise old men cautioned.

‘Why’d a woman find in her heart a place for a man like me? Why should I have to beg for love? Plead for love? If somebody had wanted to, she’d have stayed. Why shall I impose?’ Pearls of wisdom for each question. A gift hamper, if you will. Seals off every mouth. You can’t school someone who doesn’t want be schooled.

Monsieur was once known for his roaring laughter. Never the life of a party at any rate, but a man that knew how to entertain himself. Though now, even the tears have dried up. Couldn’t he just crack up for no reason? Laugh at the expense of someone – isn’t that the cornerstone of friendship? Gather around, spin yarns in praise of an adventurous life? Just make something up on the spot and let others lap it up? Ain’t no flying squad coming in for inspection. Or, maybe– take someone’s case. Lose his temper. Bicker, worse misbehave, if not enjoy. Get crossed with someone and swear on him to never cross paths again; pledge enmity, in fact. Frown and yell so much, the man in front pees his pants and falls to his feet scampering for mercy, and be pleasantly surprised with former’s nobility. ‘Oh, what a noble come to justice,’ the man would find himself saying, even if just for the sake of it.

If he’s sleeping, we’d like him to rise; if hasn’t slept in days, pray take a nap, wreathe a garland full of dreams by his pillow. That’s all everyone asks of Monsieur. But he’s so within himself, he’s nowhere to be found. Earlier, at least he used to sit by his window, with the account of his years. Gained this, lost that; plus, minus. He harboured grudges, entertained complaints or found questions to answers. Then threw away the ledger in frustration to look out the window, admiring the night sky. Let alone plead with life, he now won’t even knock the door to that court. The stars that twinkled several nights in hopes he’d come looking for them, had no choice but to fall into a black hole. 

If it was an ailment, you’d take him to a doctor, but what does one do about nothing?

Still; motionless. He lives the same day each night. Time is slipping out; life is rushing albeit his snail pace. Boyhood is giving way to old age. The eyes are turning baggy; forehead full of meandering rivers and the dimples on his cheek an oxbow lake. The innocence on face is under siege – grey hair on beard leading the hostile takeover. 

A pain in the arse for his brother in or out of law, uncles and father and forefathers. They watch with bated breath Monsieur’s next step. What’s it going to be? Why wouldn’t he just commit a mistake – grave or otherwise? Give someone some grief? Take up something – anything, even vile? An order, a request, advice, gripe, a fight, a debate, vandalism, war, love – just about anything this world has on offer. Let something take its course. How long will he tread with caution, with such calculated moves? Or maybe renounce everything and head for the woods. They’d probably feel bad, maybe even guilty, but at least heave a sigh of relief. At least he’s done something – finally!

Well, it should be brought to notice at this point that Monsieur lost his mother almost a decade ago. And who doesn’t? In this day and age, who doesn’t die? Everyone meets their fate anyway, sooner or later, fully or partial, more or less. But Monsieur took it to heart. ‘This shouldn’t have happened, this wasn’t right,’ he kept mumbling, ‘it didn’t have to be this way.’ Now, now, is that how things will go on from here on? Are you in charge now – will you decide if the Sun comes out from the West going forward? It happened because it happened. Ain’t no letter in your mailbox will pre-notify you of what’s going to happen or ask your wellbeing. How long will you sit with it; how long will you sit out? So, you fell once; it’s not as though you’d limp the whole way. A million explainers have not turned the tide yet for Monsieur.

And it’s not as if Monsieur isn’t a man worth his salt. He topped his university back in the day. Curriculum or co-curricular. People never got tired of saying he’d make it big someday. Monsieur would laugh it off. People have been getting tired for some time now. Monsieur hopes someone would say it again but also dreads someone would say it again so he steps outside with caution.

I stated very matter-of-factly, in fact. Not everyone makes something of their lives. It’s not etched in stone. It’s not a rule or a law; no one’s going to jail you if you don’t make something of it. If you don’t, then so be it. Crisis aside, mid-life is gone; the other half shall too. When the lungs run out of air, so will the breath. But if someone doesn’t even like to be damned, what does one help them with?

For years, he kept trying. Maybe does too, behind closed doors. Wonder what direction he’s been rowing this boat of dreams; for he’s further away from both shores. His peers are not his peers anymore; nor are his juniors. Wonder if he rues it? Doesn’t show though. If someone asks, he’ll just lecture them about the dangers of materialism or capitalism. You either give up or give in, wondering who the joke’s on. ‘Everyone must prosper; I’m happy for them,’ is all he says in response. Wonder if he knows his own cart of happiness is empty. Does he not feel it? Can he not be bothered? Shame, guilt, regret – does nothing pay him a visit? What is he – a stone?

‘What is it that you want to do?’ I balked one day. 

He just stood in silence. Inching further away, while still. Didn’t bat an eyelid. Didn’t mutter under his breath. The sky fell to the ground and the birds forgot to chirp. 

I walked out. 

Wonder what’s going on inside his head, heart, whatever he still has. In the age where everyone claims to be a God, all he desires is to be a tree. As though he’d plead the next instant – I shall give you shade, fruits, flowers, bark, wood. I shall look for the Sun and rain. I will be there just in that corner; don’t cut me down, that’s all.

He’s here and he’s not. Monsieur has pledged his allegiance to the oblivion. Even this time of the day, you’d rather find him plugging life into that lifeless cycle of his.

‘But who the heck are you to taint his honour?’ you might ask of me. 

Me?

Monsieur.

Vishaal Pathak writes short stories and poems, mostly about memories and travel. Some of his work has appeared in ARTS by the People, Five on the Fifth, The Kelp Journal, Vermilion, The Rush, The Rainbow Poems, Open Minds Quarterly, Antonym Mag, Good Printed Things and Metonym Journal.

‘MEETING WALTER’ & ‘MINGLING AMONG THE THRONGS’

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet.

MEETING WALTER

I am in denial of my aging process. I have been blessed with enviable family genes which  include my still having all my hair, thick and dark. Expanding on that good fortune, I look  younger than the years I’ve accrued. I’m 65. Not that I do this, but I can get away with saying  I’m 50 without having anyone doubt me. But 50 isn’t considered “young” by young people. I  know men who, at age 40, look older than I. Yes, it’s subjective, but it’s not misplaced ego. I am  aware and grateful. 

==== 

Several years ago, while on vacation at a picket fenced-in guest house in Key West, Florida, I  met a man named Walter Stern. At the time, I was somewhere in my early 30’s. Walter was 71  years old which, if I remember correctly, was the same age as my mother. He looked quite  weathered to me. Tall and thin, sparse grey hair with a ghostly pale white body and deep lines on  his face. He thought he looked young for his years. Though I was happy that he believed that to  be true, he was wrong. And in my opinion, Walter was not a handsome 71. Arguably dignified, there was nothing physically attractive about him and no signs of his having once been a catch.  Obviously, I could be off about his appearance in his younger days.  

==== 

Walter was a German Jew. As a boy during Hitler’s reign, he was wheelchair bound, afflicted  with bone cancer. People spit at him. For so many reasons, I can’t stand visualizing that.  

His family owned a farm in the Bavarian area of Germany. All their land, buildings and goods  were confiscated and sanctioned as “government property” by the Nazis. I don’t know the history  of his relatives: who survived and why. Who didn’t and how. Perhaps their not living in a city  made it less difficult to hide, or not be hunted like rabid animals.  

I can’t remember Walter telling me when he came to the United States. He didn’t speak with a  German accent. By the time we met in the 1990’s, he was a retired textile worker, living well in  an apartment in Forest Hills, a lovely, Tudor strewn area of Queens, NY. I believe he worked his  way up to ownership of the Seventh Avenue company in New York City’s Garment District for  which he was employed his entire adult life. His lover of many years had been an African  American man, living in Harlem, uptown on the west side of Manhattan. He had passed away  some time before Walter and I met.  

==== 

Returning home to New York, the following month I invited Walter to join me for drinks and an  early dinner in Soho. I had landed a job at a large, grey walled gallery on West Broadway, across  from a high-end clothing store called the Gallery of Wearable Art. They featured a beautiful,  living mannequin in their display window — a woman — who posed for hours at a time. I loved  watching her stay absolutely still: making small, strategic movements every once in a while. If  you stood directly in front of the window for a few moments, she might wink at you. How she  stayed motionless and emotionless is a rare skill and must have been something she was  schooled to do. Reminiscent of the frozen stance and expressionless face held by British guards  outside of Buckingham Palace. Men dressed in their uniform finery, as if they had stepped out of  “The Nutcracker” ballet.  

==== 

Walter and I dined at a trendy restaurant a few doors down from the gallery. When the weather  was clear and warm, which in this case it was, there were tables placed outside on a serrated  black iron platform the width of the building. The floor-to-ceiling windows folded into  themselves and seemed to vanish, exposing the cavernous space and opening the front wall for  guests to view the theatricality of the street scene. This was during Soho’s hey day, before the  elite Manhattan galleries moved north to an undeveloped piece of Chelsea.  

One memorable restaurant in that desolate far westside area was Florent, named for it’s French  born owner. Years before Chelsea embarked on her evolution, Florent was open 24 hours a day,  hidden in plain sight among warehouses as well as gay bars that, at that time, had been  strategically placed at the edge of the city’s foreboding fringe. On a cobble stone street across  from a bagel factory and beneath a decaying trestle, lived this diner/bistro where truck drivers,  club kids (of which I was one), celebrities and drag queens congregated to capacity during the  black hours after midnight.  

==== 

On West Broadway in Soho, as we casually dined, Walter and I talked about his business and his  late boyfriend. I remember feeling an affection for him that I still cannot categorize. What I  mean by that is he didn’t feel like a father figure to me, nor a friend who happened to be twice  my age. I was attentive to his story-telling as he relayed the details of his life when he was  young, during a period of time that was now chronicled in history books. As genuinely interested  as I was, I had no agenda as far as forming some lasting friendship with him.  

I have a fascination with what occurred in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. I find it incredible, the  depths of hate and cruelty humans can unleash when permission is encouraged in society. Walter  was more than an historical witness. 

As a Jew, I’ve never had to suffer the ripple or overt affects of anti-semitism. Less than 2.5  percent of Americans are Jewish, yet there is a significant population in New York City: the  largest in the world, outside of the country of Israel. Though I was not bar mitzvahed, a ritual  considered a right-of-passage for a Jewish teenage boy, I am a Jew by culture on all sides. I’ve  become militantly proud of my heritage as I’ve gotten older. When I was in high school, I didn’t  think it was “sexy.” That may seem like an odd adjective. To strangers, I sometimes pretended to  be Italian. I now see that self denial as self-hatred. And frankly, my last name reveals my  background, even after having been Americanized at Ellis Island, when my grandfather  emigrated from Russia.  

I can’t say I celebrate my culture with any religious fervor, but for me, it is part of my identity.  And I owe it not just to my family, but to people like Walter, on whose shoulders I proudly rest,  without thinking on the privileges I am able to take for granted. Walter Stern. A Jewish man who  survived 20th Century European horrors, to embrace a new life in a world an ocean away. A  country in which he would call home.  

MINGLING AMONG THE THRONGS

When Neil walked into the bar on 10th Avenue, though it had been years since I’d seen his face, I  recognized him immediately. I estimate that he and I are about the same age. We are what I term  as the “last of a certain breed.” Possibly fascinating but not to be envied. We are single, gay men  of an “advanced” age, out on the prowl. At least that’s how I presume we are judged by those  watching from the sidelines.  

In an historically short time, things have progressed for the better, particularly if you are young  and don’t struggle with what came before, if even aware of the shoulders on which you stand.  And though there is a thriving business in gay bars, places to see and be seen, most are not  patronized for the purpose of finding men of my years. Unless they are establishments that  invite briefcase carrying Sugar Daddies in loafers and suits, where money is exchanged for  companionship and services rendered, in the short or long term.  

==== 

Neil and I are dinosaurs that can be found mingling among the throngs of young men drinking  garnish clad cocktails and domestic beer from a tap. Nothing exceptional and not all that rare, at  least here in this city of millions. Years of experience can lead to good conversation, as long as  we initiate, and the younger man is either cornered and polite, or willing to listen. There are  places more accepting of our kind but I don’t find stimulation there, nor persons I might want to  date or fuck. It’s not that I’m adverse to meeting a handsome man near to my age, but almost all  of those bachelors are trolling for youth. Or they aren’t bachelors at all.  

The domino effect that applies, travels back many decades to a time when a personally  complicated AIDS-related destruction altered all that would follow for me. Though I moved on  long ago, something or things subconscious became road blocks to what might have been healthy  pairings (that’s when I probably should have returned to therapy). Finding or choosing the safety  of considering myself a father figure or repair man doesn’t open up opportunities for an equal  relationship. Wounded masculinity is very attractive to me, since the focus tends to be on the  other one. A deflection I have mastered.  

==== 

Though not at another man’s request, after almost 40 years, I put away the photograph of  Stephen — the one person from my past where dreamlike memories still affect my mood. If he  were alive, he would not be anything like the picture I looked at everyday. It was taken before we  met, when he was in his early twenties. As my imagination took flight visualizing what I decided he might currently look like, I no longer wanted to see him as he had been in a  photograph shot when he wasn’t yet 25. He would now be close to 70. Around the age his  parents were when I met them. 

I don’t spend my life comparing others to my memory of him. Though I’d be lying if I said that  what happened doesn’t influence my present day behavior. Being unsuccessful in my finding  committed love is not blamed upon the similarities to or differences from who came before. I  know of a good many people, straight and gay, who survived unhappy endings to bravely pick  themselves up and embark on subsequent pairings. As for people who decide to remain in  damaged relationships, I guarantee there are those who settle in order not to be alone. 

==== 

I know almost nothing about Neil. I don’t remember why I know his name. I have no idea  where he lives or what he does for a living. I don’t even think we’ve ever had a conversation. 

My obsessive fascination with Neil lies on my wondering how we both ended up in this state.  He may not think about it like that, if he thinks about it at all. He represents something to me that  probably has nothing to with who he is as a human being.  

Whether I live an additional 25 years or leave Earth tonight, I don’t want to end my days with  unaddressed regrets. One of the great privileges of my life is knowing that nothing was left unsaid between my mother and I before she passed away. The only guilt I feel is the convenient  distraction of wishing I had been at her side on the day she went to sleep forever.  

==== 

One thing Neil and I arguably share is that we have both aged well. But that’s not necessarily a  reflection of anything more significant than misdirected vanity. What I mean by that is, from a  distance, you might mistake us for being 20 years younger than we actually are. Come close and  you will uncover the truth. In my case you may discover the love handles I strategically keep  hidden, or the noticeable sagging beneath my chin that cannot be camouflaged well, or the loss  of youth in my facial expression. I have managed to deflect lines on my face usually associated  with age. But I chalk that up to genetic fortunes. 

Other than dropping dead, there is no escaping getting older. When I see someone who is 60 and  has had a facelift, I think of the sentiments my friend Margie once said. I’m paraphrasing. “Yes,  she’s had a facelift but she still looks like she’s 60 — with a facelift.” That may seem like a  hypocritical comparison coming from a man who still works out with weights religiously. It  helps in my fight, but the shape of the body as I get older, unequivocally changes. So much for  defying gravity. For Neil and I, I wonder how long we will go on in this delusion of unrealistic  denial. I shouldn’t put Neil in the same category as I find myself, since I know almost nothing  about him.  

When I was 39, I had a year long relationship with a gorgeous man who was married to a woman  and had two teenage daughters. We met in the bleachered seats of a concert at Madison Square  Garden. He was standing in front of me and kept turning around to stare at me. And though it  couldn’t last, most of my friends made up scenarios of what was going on in my private life.  Since I didn’t talk about it, no one really knew. I still fight the urge to contact him, as if there  could be some seductively desperate future we might share. I haven’t spoken with him in years,  yet I still miss what we never had.  

What is it that Neil has? A lover no one knows about? A choice he made not to opt for anything  serious? Still searching for something he can’t seem to find? I haven’t a clue. And though I  write about him, it’s none of my business. 

Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 75 short stories (website: www.andrewsarewitz.com. Substack access is @asarewitz) as well as having penned scripts for various media. Mr. Sarewitz is a recipient of the City Artists Corp Grant for Writing. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter, Nancy Wake, the “White Mouse”) garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA; produced with a multicultural cast and crew. Member: Dramatists Guild of America.

‘First Breath’, ‘No Magic in the World’ & ‘What You Left Behind’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

First Breath

quietly lying beneath the dew of an awakening
journeying into lands yet to be
she is still, within the smile of a warmer solstice
given to the universe in her vulnerable pose
fingers bent upon the soft palms
her chest heaves below the gentle cocoon
patiently awaiting in the uncommon bliss
her features teased by the rays of a new star
she remains listening for the sign of a new life
in perfect restful unison, he too is alert
to the imperceptible motion
a change in the heat of the season.
the aroma of far-away lands tickles her senses
her hand seeks reassurance
together they feel a gentle trepidation.

No Magic in the World

Chaos and a few lucky encounters
and she walks up the aisle in her gown
maybe royalty perhaps a borrowed miracle.
It’s time now to fly to northern climes
from the warm hearth of a mother’s nest
she twirls in a waltz she invented.
Soon to be alone with the little one
the future is easy to predict
when the light will grow dimmer at home.
Matriarch of these two mere decades
she will settle in worrisome rest
contemplating her image in duplicate.
It is time now for the girl to walk on
quickly gazing back at the reassuring smile
woman she too will build an estate.
Friend and mom she sees her image
so young yet so confident in the flesh
there is no turning back the silly hands on the clock.

What You Left Behind

I watch the garden change my mother
where the earth has been turned many times since
you walked away from your beloved fields
a world you could enter with unending grace.
Into the barn it seems every corner recalls
the sound of the hammer and the saw
as you built my father another shed to
those furry animals you cared for like no other.
Near the hearth I recall the fragrance
of those meals you imagined for my childhood
granny as you aged in timeless decades
your braided hair often wild as a teen’s.
I seek you in every room dear siblings
when you return to your home so far away
to find but a few lines in the dust of my road
abandoned rappers of a sweet delight.
Your lives are saved in layers of time
like coats of paint in an ageless palimpsest
a quilt visible only to those who knew you
with every piece a jolt to a slowing heart.

Fabrice Poussin’s work in poetry and photography has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide. Most recently, his collections of poetry In Absentia, If I Had a Gun, Half Past Life, and The Temptation of Silence were published in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Silver Bow.

‘The Crafty Raft’

Photographer: Tobi Brun

The Crafty Raft

Alexis de Tocqueville never visited St Louis but Charles Dickens showed up and so did I. These names spurt from the mouths of children who are with their parents on the 630 foot tram ride to the top of the Gateway Arch. No Tocqueville in my resume outside of a vague recall of him and democracy but I did read Dickens’ Great Expectations in high school. I threw around the Pip name for a while, pip this, and pip that. Oh, I have toked. Kon-Tiki and Huckleberry Finn were the other two I conquered. Mark Twain certainly spent some time here, no idea about Thor Heyerdahl. Maybe the watery pages of the second and third inspired me to join the Navy but they didn’t prompt me to someday visit the piece of the Mississippi waterway here in St Louis. I drive a fuel oil truck. An elderly chatty customer inspired me. She regrets never visiting 2 of the 7 Wonders of the U.S.: The Gateway Arch and Disneyworld. I had no interest in the rodent trap. I plan to gift Milicent with a few postcards. The kids, - he’s Drew, she’s Quinn - are focused on a marbled notebook page. I figure her age is 10 and the boy, 8. Mickey and Minnie watches stand out on their small wrists. They are dressed casually except for his mauve bowtie. Her jumper is subdued madras. The cursive writing is small. Quinn has intricately braided honey blonde hair. Drew is freckled. His brown locks have a few streaks of red. I wonder about the unisex names. They strike me as precocious the way they annunciate or maybe just well schooled. “The Arch is as high as it is wide,” Quinn says. Their dad, Bruce, has scary tattoos; the largest are three crows with human skull faces. On the back of each hand is a purple star, law and order man or a Cowboys fan? His arms are muscular and his cheeks are puffy. His cap advertises “Titleist.” I bet he’s able to drive a golf ball into orbit.

“It doesn’t look so to me, Quinny,” he says.

“You are the victim of an optical illusion, trust me, Pop,” says Quinn.

“Shucks, I forgot to pack my tape measure,” adds Drew.

“It is 192.024 meters,” says Pop, with a half baked Brit accent. He gets three “wows.” I almost joined in. The cute, very pregnant wife, Audrey, is busy knitting. The yarns are a couple of shades of blue. Her raven hair is short. She wears a maternity outfit. It’s white with tiny pink tulips scattered over it. 

When we reach the top of Arch, and debark at the Observation Deck, the kids are of course tour guides. “Look, there’s a wedding,” shouts Quinn.

“Will they throw mice?” asks Drew.” Quinn taps on her watch crystal and gives him thumbs down then points out the Old Courthouse where slavery triumphed she says which brings Huck and Jim to mind. Audrey asks if the groom is blindfolded. Drew didn’t forget binoculars. He has a small pair. He reports no peepers are hidden. “He can see what he’s getting himself into,” he quips. Pictures of a wedding party are being snapped. The bridesmaids are matched in yellow and gray. The girl reminds her brother that his eyes were yellow when he had jaundice last year. She says hers are gray but she’s lying. They are a pale blue. Quinn tells Mom that they have decided the baby’s name that she suggested is just fine. I imagine the child being born in minutes and named Lewis after explorer Meriwether, or Louisa, hell, Lou fits them all to with the same gender deal.

“Tommy is a winner,” adds the boy. Audrey looks quickly at me, swallows hard. She’s the one, green eyes. Glancing down I see her fingers are crossed. 

We met outside the West Bend Bar and it was about 9 months ago. I’d noticed her checking me out inside. She sat a couple of captain’s chairs away. I didn’t make a move due to the wedding ring. I figured she was waiting for her hubby, not me. Did these two kids have off the street fathers? If so, could this be filed under ultra Democracy, Alexis?

Dickens would have them on a street begging. She was waiting outside the Bend Bar when I left. “Take me to the river, “she said, eyes sparkling. The streetlight alerted me that the wedding ring had disappeared and cast a glitter on the jeweled doodad that held her dark black hair in a ponytail. What the hell, I had no commitments. Jayne, the woman I’d been with won a motorcycle in an American Legion raffle and joined a female gang. I was left in the dust. I learned later that the dust and the bike had come from the maw of a fortune teller who went by Lady Luella, another Lou for Christ’s sake! I’d bought Jayne the winning ticket. I opened the passenger door of my eight-year-old Pontiac and brushed some McDonald’s fries off the passenger seat. My new friend slid in and wrapped herself in her arms. She was wearing a long black skirt, light pink blouse and a maroon shawl. She didn’t bother with the seat belt. I put on a golden oldies station. Del Shannon was singing “Runaway.” After we parked under some pines I got out and held her door. I realized I’d left the headlights on. I turned to step away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

She took my hand and we walked to the river. We sat on the cement bank. I heard an owl. I heard a bullfrog. The moon made eerie tree branch shadows in the slowly flowing water. She reached in her purse and pulled out a handful of Popsicle sticks. “Make something,” she said, counting out 15. I did the only thing I ever knew how to do with this timber. I weaved a raft. Were they from actual popsicles, fudgsicles or ice cream bars or an arts and crafts store? I had one left that I called a paddle. She inspected my work. She took the paddle, inserted it to make a handle of it and demonstrated a fan.

“Cool me off,” she whispered. Was that request misplaced? On a patch of lumpy grass she laid down, made minimal clothing adjustments and spread her arms as if she were crucified but her legs were tucked and parted in a fleshy welcome. I entered Wonderland with crazy thoughts of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, spikes and hell. Her breath smelled like vinegar. There was no lingering when the weirdness was done. She held the raft to her chest, hurried to the Pontiac and said nothing but an Act of Perfect Contrition and resumed her scrunched position as far away from me as the door would allow. I remembered the prayer. If death were imminent and no confessor near you could squeeze through the heavenly gates. I couldn’t recall if any purgatory time was involved. Before I dropped her off where I’d found her she freed her hair. She broke down the raft/fan, bound them in the ponytail maker and returned them to her purse. Enough strands fell helter-skelter across her face to make her look like a woman possessed. She wasn’t through with the sticks. She pulled the kindling from her purse with a flourish. She tapped my shoulder with them as if knighting me. I recalled Twain’s conman royalty fake that Huck and Jim rescued.

She offered her hand to shake. I did; a quick squeeze. “Oh, what’s your name,” she asked.

“Tom.”

“Take care, Tommy,” she said.

“And you,” I asked.

“I’m anonymous. Remember me as the stick lady.”

The tram trip return is quiet. Drew, Quinn and Bruce do some yawning. Audrey and I communicate via eyelid semaphore. Audrey bumps into me when we are exiting. I walk around for a while in a daze, lost in the hordes heading to the Cardinals game. I get lucid in front of a store devoted to left handed people. Window posters read:

“De Tocqueville And Dickens Were Southpaws.”

“Rheumatism Forced Twain To Join Us.

“Stan Musial Smote Homers Port Side.

Righties Quinn and Drew probably knew all this. I wonder if Bruce is impotent or they’d discovered serial killers in his bloodline. Were the tattoos the monsters manifesting themselves? Had he’d gotten a vasectomy but wanted a family, didn’t want to adopt? Would her tale of me be treasured between them along with the other two? Did her sperm hunting accounts act as an aphrodisiac for them? How did Audrey know I would be in St. Louis? Is she a friend of Milicent’s? Did she know the biker’s seer Luella?

I pick up some postcards at Walgreens and stroll to a Luke’s Bar. There is a big Lewis & Clark print, a man poling a keelboat. They’ll send Milicent greetings their best too. I order a pitcher of native Bud, sit at a corner table and start my Milicent chore. I sign the first one Thor Hyerdhal, Alexis on the last of the 10. I choose a Suey King House for dinner, but got Chow Mein. I do not use chopsticks. Waiting for my meal I ponder whether Tommy will be a serious know-all like Quinn or one with a comic side like Drew who might describe the Arch as a giant mouse house entry, the world its wall.

On the way to drop the mail my Milicent’s mementos, I put my hands in my jacket pockets. In the starboard one I discover the kink baton. Immersed in another fog I rush to the Mighty Miss. A riverboat is preparing to depart. I sit in the sand, free the Popsicle gear. I rebuild the raft and almost launch it with a silly vision retrieving it from the Ten Mile someday. I break it down then think better and reassemble. What harm can it do? The ponytail gizmo will be my St. Louis souvenir, a dashboard charm. Maybe next oil delivery at Milicent’s house, I’ll fake finding it in her driveway and gauge her reaction when I ask if it’s hers. 

Maybe it’s Audrey’s religious antics that cause me to suddenly view the River as a holy water font. I dip my fingers and cross myself before crashing a figment of bubbly on it. I poorly mimic a ship’s horn signaling underway.

A passing foot cop gives me a $20 ticket for littering. Now that’s a pip!

Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran . His fiction has most recently been published by The Story Sanctum and Double.

‘Maltese Smuggler’

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d's universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s poetry and art collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024, Forthcoming), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Maltese Smuggler

I’m a smuggler. A female smuggler. Disguised as a man in the year of 1780, I accrue lucrative bounties, guiding helpless ships to dash apart against Malta’s rocks, believing they are close to shore and safety. A weaved beard hangs from my face, disguising my feminine wiles, stitched together from the hair of shipwrecked bodies, bearded men thrown against rocks. I’m heartless. Ruthless. I brandish a true smuggler’s heart, charred and blackened by sinful greed. 

My name, San Pawl, is deceptive, duping others to believe in a holiness and devout religion that I shall never bear. My crew of male smugglers trust me, unconditionally, for I have brought them many bounties, riches that far exceed what they could make selling caught fish at local Maltese markets. Within me, they see a saint, one made from rock salt and the turn of tides. A symbol of constancy and fortuitous pathways. I’m fluid, bending in their wake, fulfilling desires of wealth and power. 

Smugglers’ Cave is where I wile away daytime hours, readying to attract ships to false light at night. I bob within a tied fishing boat, brightly painted in red, yellow, green and blue: the Maltese colours of fortune, but I’m hidden by the black cloak of the inlet caves, obliterated from view. I sleep in the boat, tucked in a cocoon of blankets, dreaming of freedom and love – tendrils of daytime pleasures to weave amidst my hungry hands, enclosed and sheltered as I am within a floating womb of wood, boasting primary hues. Green for vegetation, yellow for sun, blue for water and red for the soil of the island and its russet flares like a hare’s fear as it dashes to save its life. These colours protect me, ensuring ships with high bounties, sail, without suspicion, into my awaiting clasp.

Translucent blue is my sea blanket, protecting me outside the caves, surrounding as a watery halo. My band of smugglers return to the mainland by day leaving me mostly alone except for my odd trips for supplies, but I am blissfully alone. Harbouring wives and children, they seek to sell their illicit wares, but most hold a candle for me, a dim one, for it is not easily forged, a love affair between men, not in strict Roman Catholic households. They do not suspect me a woman. A woman knows such things. So, I buoy myself to sleep, left to guard our stolen treasures from chests that glint in streaks of sunlight like opening eyes, when the sun strikes its blade, as they tend to human duties. 

My recent shipwreck belonged to Italian royalty, bringing great wealth to Maltese shores. To me. Crowns, diamond rings, pearl necklaces and pendants line the perimeter walls of the cave, seeking a new wearer, feeling unseen in charcoal shade next to absent human flesh. I sleep turning a ruby ring, a bright large stone, within my thinking fingers, turning in repetitive circles as I drift to realms where I imagine the life of the true owner. Regal robes, grand feasts, awaiting servants, palatial courts, performing jesters, and pomp emit an aura, telling me a story of the ring’s past. I imagine that a young queen bore its gilded circle upon her slender finger, eyeing her reflection in its pomegranate sheen, ripe and fresh at court, betrothed to a much older, grey-haired king, finding only dissatisfaction in its reflection.

Such trinkets speak to me, channelling a new lifeline of sorts. For this ring, the wearer is shackled by familial bonds to a king she can never love for her heart is already locked to another, left behind in a land she can never return to. I sense its yearning as a pulse within my own veins, channeling a passage to my beating heart. For I, too, love an unattainable other. A woman. A siren. A maiden of the sea. By night she visits me here, as I ready to smuggle after an afternoon of mostly rest. Her tail powers her to this exact cave, shimmering with iridescent slices of the sun – a travelling light, is she. My own lamp. 

On her arrival, the cave illumines instantly by her presence, dancing glimmers of metallic skin reflect on the ceiling, beautiful spots of colour. Holding a large pearl held within her hands, she sings the song that I have grown to know, like a childhood lullaby. I have no semblance of her language, but am lulled by her dulcet notes, becoming synchronised with her as she emits a siren call. The melody laces my throat, spiralling into my essence: every bone, vessel and organ reverberates, enlivens with each note she brings into being. Securing herself with her anchor tail, she presents a closed shell, large and pearlescent, wearing a coral peach sheen; she slowly opens it to reveal its hidden treasure. An illuminating pearl, ethereal and mythical – nothing like the pearls I catch from shipwrecked boats. Its light permeates each cavernous space of me, filling my watery home, radiating to ships, far into the watery distance, far flung from the island. 

My men await the nightly light which beckons a new shipwreck, positioned strategically as we are as a band of smugglers along the northwesterly coastline. They know nothing of her sorcery, her dark magic upon me, nor do they care, as long as bags of coin become theirs to spend.

As a particularly large ship fastens on her emitting light, it steadies its course towards the shards of sharpened rock, its unbeknown stony shroud. Duped, it courses straight, drawn as a fish upon a meaty lure, headstrong and determined to secure its safe passage to sandy shores. As of every night, once a ship is doomed, placed on its path of irreversible destruction, she lifts herself to me, weaving her ebony locks into the boat. As is tradition, she invites me to kiss her, undressing my false beard, peeling back masculine layers that are not rightly mine. She knows too much, always has. I too, like a fish on a hook, succumb to my fate: her damask soft lips as velvet meet with mine, whilst her caressing hands hold my head. Instantly, I’m spellbound, intoxicated by marine beauty. Her eyes lock upon mine, deepest emeralds of the sea, telling me soundless tales of her origin and otherness. I drink each tale in, wishing for her to be truly mine, to lift her into my fishing boat, and for the world to stop spinning, with only the two of us locked in a timeless embrace. 

Yet, the kiss is always curtailed, distracted by the commotion of crew and ship, both blasted into the fangs of steel, the rocky outcrop of Smugglers Cave, and not as the sailors had hoped, onto the expectant slope of sand. Hollers and panic cries of help resound, ricochetting off the walls of the cave, until my love can bear the din no longer, quickly shutting closed her pearl, and disappearing into inky waters, swimming swiftly out to the deeper Mediterranean Sea. 

Back to seclusion. Back to her safety. Her kind. 

Sunken without her, left in echoic darkness, I tuck my feet to my body, rocking myself gently in the boat’s bowels, trying to break myself free from her happy bewitchment of my soul. Reapplying my façade of a beard, I ready to oar my way to the detritus outside, picking the ship’s great wares of wealth from atop the sea’s surface. My men await me, all hidden within the dark mouths of caves, readying to swim to claim barrels and treasure chests. 

The process repeats, night after night, week after week, until one-night changes my fate forever. 

As soft dusk, bruised purple skies, fall upon Smugglers’ Cave, I awaken, readying to prepare for another stolen meeting with my siren of the sea. I sit and wait. Plum sky forming to ebony rolls outside my cave, eradicating any last wisp of pearly light from within the cave. Hollow and alone, I continue to wait, summoning her from my soul to quickly arrive and begin our lovers dance as is nocturnal ritual. 

Time passes. 

More time passes. 

It stretches like malleable love. 

Bereft, I wallow, sinking into the underbelly of the boat, desperate to find a means of light, wanting only to search for her. My absent siren. So embroiled in love have I become that I nearly forget about the ensuing shipwreck, so fixated have I become on her lips, her tender kiss and caress. Everything that is her has poisoned my mind. 

Fumbling carelessly in pitch black waters, I find a disused gas lamp, and light it with shaking fingers, sweat streaming into my eyes from the blind struggle. As the oil ignites, a familiar world undresses itself to me: my rocky lair. 

Yet, alas, all is not as it once was.

The cave’s walls and stores are no longer lined and filled with treasure but lie empty, hollow from theft. Theft of the most grievous kind. Nausea rises in my throat as my heartbeats treble in speed as the sad realisation dawns: my love, my siren of the seas, has taken all from me and my merry band of smugglers. Our wares are depleted except for one object that glints lamentably as if in apology by the struggling light of the gas lamp. A tear instantly falls from my eye as I see what is left: the mark of the thief, wanting their identity to be known. 

On a single outcrop of rock lies her empty shell - without its pearl. Devoid of its heart and light source, my trade is over. No gas lamps could ever emit the same fantastical light to beckon ships to these traitorous rocks. Oaring my way shakily to the empty shell, I gulp away intense guilt and embarrassment of my gullibility to fall for her lies and deceit. 

Yet perhaps we are more suited than I thought: both thieves, stealers of others’ hearts and wealth. Clasping the shell, I tuck it into my c-shaped body, leaking sorrow onto its pearlescent glow, dimming now in her absence and abandonment of me. 

Slowly, the nighttime waves lull me to broken sleep where I dream of her ghostly fingers caressing my face: the true Maltese smuggler. 

A lover that I shall never see again. 

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her sixth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 with ‘Carbonito de Sophie’ and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.

‘THE KINDS OF POEMS’, ‘OTHER PEOPLE’ & ‘TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM’

Rich Spang was born in San Francisco, living in many places usually near water and on islands. His scientist father was an award winning photographer and was never without a camera. Neither was Rich. Largely self taught, Rich was trained as an architectural draftsman, has been an art show roadie for a successful painter, a musician, a Scuba Instructor in Los Angeles and Maui and also a volunteer diver for the Seattle Aquarium. Rich’s “day job” was as an electronics technician and he has recently retired from Seattle Children’s Hospital where he provided IT support for the medical staff. Besides Photography, Rich is an avid reader and obsessive gardener.

THE KINDS OF POEMS
There are love poems
and there are death poems.
The former are odes
to young people.
The latter are elegies
to the old.
But slowly
and inexorably,
the young age
and the poems
eventually teeter between
the grace, the elegance,
and the inevitable.
Eventually.
the love poems
and the death poems
merge into
the substance and consequence
of life poems.
Those are the ones
I’m writing now.

OTHER PEOPLE
They point at me on the street,
shout, “He’s the one! He did it!”
They don’t give chase.
They don’t call a cop.
They figure pointing and shouting is enough.
Others join the chorus.
Some lean out of windows.
Others cry out from passing cars.
I have done so much to fit in.
I dress like others.
I comb my hair neatly.
I hold down an ordinary job.
I join in sports talk.
I even laugh at the same jokes,
Yet, there’s something about me.
Even I can sense it.
I point and shout at myself sometimes.
“He’s the one! He did it!”
That’s nothing I haven’t said already.

TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM
He writes his name on the blackboard.
Then chalks up a map.
And then a formula,
followed by an equation,
some historical dates,
and a parsed sentence.
There are the people in the world
who need to see this stuff,
to remember it,
and, if they and he are lucky,
to understand it.
He stares out the window.
He looks at his watch.
Now where are they?
he wonders.
Now where is anyone anymore?

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.