Issue 13, 2025

“It won’t be long now,” my mother said, “and we’d better get ready.” I was five years old when my mother said Jesus was returning soon. 

“To this day, every time I hear a Pink Floyd song, I think of my older cousin, and the peculiar smell of that shelf: the vague odor of pot, ancient carpet cleaners, mold, the oiled leather glove, the worn cleats… and all those scents with which we associate youth.” 

“Most weekday evenings, Melik and I took practice rooms and applied ourselves to learning the pieces our teachers had assigned to us… Soon we’d be kissing. But not on my piano bench because someone might catch sight of us from the hallway.” 

“I dreamt about Edward again last night. I sprang him from the hospital, where he lay dying, hospital gown and all.”

“In the end, all Barbies end up in the same place—abandoned under beds, in bins, and in shoeboxes with no clothes. Astrophysicist, Microbiologist, Olympic Athlete Barbie all end up naked anyway, all alike, their careers forgotten.

“Like just about every other millennial teenage male, I went to see The Matrix in the theater on opening weekend. As soon as the movie was over, I ran out the glass doors and up the nearest brick wall… I got four wall-steps, then five, then fell.” 

“In the bathroom, dirt and years of soap build-up adhered to the cracked tiles. I could smell the odor of a fetid body getting wet but not clean.” 

“What do you want, Clara?” I ask her, though I know she won’t answer… She leans against the warm concrete, still smiling and holding my gaze.  

“On the first night of my women’s stand-up comedy class, I slink, late, into the back of the small dinner theater.” 

“The father looks first at his daughter, then at his wife, while smiling tenderly, which makes my stomach feel funny, almost like I’m carsick.” 

“She raised her shoulders tenderly and then asked again, Sprechen Sie Deutsch? I shook my head… Schade, she said. It’s a pity. 

“Her moles are like glassy jewels, bits of variety in the landscape of her body, like the curls of opened seedpods in that wall of weeds.” 

“It’s a new world we are living in, subterranean and dim and filled with hidden dangers. We are struggling to remain calm . . .” 

“We heard him crying for a week before we spotted him: an orange tabby cat so emaciated he looked deformed.” 

“Dr. Pipo was there the night I was diagnosed. He announced that the only doors that had closed were flying a plane solo and becoming a Navy SEAL. Everything else was intact. Had I dreamed of those two measly things?” 

“After swimming, Molly and I would climb the giant sand hills, panting up the windward side, blowing sand stinging our faces, sticking to our wet skin and hair. The wind erased our prints as we charted a course through shape-shifting dunes. Nothing in the sand was permanent.” 

“We didn’t stay long in the woman’s driveway. My mother blew air out of her nose and shook her head before opening the car door, as if this was a bad joke she could only pretend to laugh at. She walked up to Jose’s truck, the one they bought together, and stared.” 

“Steam fills our trailer home, which is parked on blocks on a dead-end street behind the high school. I can see the mill’s smokestack from my bedroom window.”

“I can’t see him—he blends into the night. But I hear him. He’s sobbing hard. It’s our neighbor boy who lives on the north side of the Section 8 duplex next door.” 

“I had the hint then, later to be confirmed, that I too would encounter my own ghosts of past selves as I proceeded through my life. Always, on these trails, I loop forward and backward, trying to remember, who was I then? ” 

“During those years in between my first and second marriage . . . I took pictures of everything: ruined architecture, cloud formations, triangles of sky. I could almost see a metaphor in these photos—space, emptiness, ruin—the sort of thing that would bring the thematic elements of an essay together.” 

“I immediately regretted answering the phone, like I always do. A friendly voice informed me that Justitia was in need. You remember that car that crashed into you guys’ cars? Yes, I said, that was years ago though. He laughs. Yes, 2015.”