Jaslynn Middleton

    Lynn stared at her reflection while she brushed her hair. It was a Saturday morning and

she had nowhere to be until that evening. A relaxing morning, she took the time to mess with her hair and test out new styles. She normally wore her hair parted down the middle, but she thought she might look better with shorter hair and a side part. She combed her hair to one side and struck several poses, considering the style from several angles, and then flicked her locks back in place.

    Her reflection didn’t mirror her action, not immediately. She blinked, surprised, and when

she opened her eyes she saw nothing amiss.

    Lynn had a late night, so it was possible that she was still suffering from sleep deprivation. She disregarded the peculiarity and continued preening.

    Her reflection hesitated a millisecond, and then copied her.

    Lynn could not ignore the delay a second time. She touched the mirror. Its surface gave

under her prodding and her fingers dipped beneath the glass. Her fingers felt neither warm nor cold, as if the substance was the same temperature as her body. Her reflection emulated the stunned curiosity spreading across their faces.

    She pushed her hand deeper into the mirror, but she did not come into contact with

anything solid, including her reflection despite the echoed movement. Both Lynn and her

reflection climbed onto the vanity and they sat on their haunches.

    Lynn pulled her hand back and it slid easily from beneath the mirror’s surface. She

examined her flesh, watching her fingers flex and stretch normally, and she felt no stranger for the experience. She glanced at her reflection, who nodded encouragingly, and Lynn placed both hands on the glass.

    She expected the same chill arousal that she brought every morning when she splashed

water against her face. Instead, she felt the embrace of warm blankets wrapped around her and then thrown off at the first sounding of the morning alarm. She tumbled through the mirror, lost her balance, and flopped onto the cold bathroom tile. Her fall was somewhat broken by a fluffy bathmat, although she would soon have bruises along her elbows and backside.

    She sat up after catching her breath and studied her surroundings. Nothing seemed to

have changed. Her almost emptied rose-scented soap sat next to the sink, along with the refill bottle that she still hadn’t used after setting it there two weeks ago. The bathmat beneath her still had the store tag on it; she’d bought it the same day as the refill bottle. The same worn towels hung from the rack next to the door. The only difference was that everything was reversed from its normal position.

    Lynn headed deeper into the house. Her bedroom was to the left, not the right, and her

bed was against the wall rather than beneath the window. It was an understandable discrepancy; she’d considered both options until her best friend told her that it was dangerous to have her bed by the window.

    The differences in the living room were more egregious. Her couch, six inches to the

right, was teal rather than green. The bookshelf that she’d built herself from scrap lumber was replaced by a used cabinet that had seen better days. Her television was an older model that she’d been gifted her sophomore year of college rather than a newer one that her mother had purchased her the previous Christmas. As her gaze brushed over the room, taking in all the dissimilarities, her eyes were drawn to the windowsill.

    Lynn’s apartment did not have a mantel, so she’d placed photographs of her family and

friends on the windowsill that overlooked the street instead. Among trips that she didn’t

remember and holidays she didn’t recognize was an image of a happy bride and groom in front of a wedding chapel.

    Lynn was not married, nor was she even dating.

    She snatched the photograph and squinted at the groom. It was her ex-boyfriend Matt.

They’d met her freshman year of college. They’d dated for three years and he proposed before he graduated. When she’d accepted, they’d agreed to wait to get married until they were both established in their respective careers.

    She heard the keys jingle and the lock turn. She was only a few feet from the front door.

She had seconds before she’d be seen. 

    Lynn set the picture down and started to sprint back toward the bathroom when she heard, “Lynn, did you get a haircut?”

    She halted, plastered a smile on her face, and turned around. Matt’s grin was the way she remembered it: eyes twinkling with mischief and a dimple for accent. He was a few years older, filled out in some places and hardened lines in others. He looked good, notwithstanding the slight disorientation from everything being reversed.

    “Um, yeah,” Lynn replied. “Do you like it?”

    Matt came closer. He smelled of ink and toner, a stark contrast to the sandalwood and

whiskey that Lynn had known. It suited him. He touched her hair, playing with the feathered

edges. “I think you could go shorter,” he said with a teasing smirk.

    She no longer remembered why she and Matt had broken up. She’d just moved into this

same apartment when her sister got sick. She took trips home every other weekend to see Emily and she was tired all the time. Matt was supportive, but he understandably began to feel neglected and they drifted apart. Had that final fight, whatever it was about, not happened here?

    They spent the afternoon getting reacquainted. They fell into a familiar rhythm, enjoying

one another’s company, and if Lynn’s behavior was strange, Matt downplayed his suspicions. As the day waned and the sun set, Lynn decided that it was time to prepare dinner and excused herself. Her parents asked what wine might pair with the meal and her sister texted that she would be late.

    Matt came into the kitchen an hour into cooking to check on her. Kissing her on the

shoulder, he asked, “Who’s coming over?”

    “Emily and my parents.”

    Matt’s idle curiosity bloomed into confusion, and his brow wrinkled. “What do you

mean?”

    “They come over once a month.” His grip on her shoulder felt uncomfortably tight. “I can

tell them not to.” She glanced at her phone on the counter, just out of reach.

    “Lynn…” Matt pulled her into his arms. She didn’t resist, but his embrace no longer felt

warm and comforting. She peeked over his shoulder, scanning the room in case she needed to escape, while he gently rubbed circles into her back.

    Lynn tittered as the contact continued, stretching out the awkwardness. “What’s wrong?”

    Matt pulled back, holding her at arm’s length. He could not look her in the eye, despite

darting glances, and he hesitated before speaking. “Today’s been a year, hasn’t it?”

    “‘Been a year’? What do you mean?”

    He swallowed. “Lynn, don’t do this again. I don’t… I don’t know if I can go through it

again.”

    Her stomach tightened. “Matt…?”

    Matt released her and retreated a few steps. He leaned on the counter, keeping his gaze

away from her.

    “Matt,” she repeated in a croak. Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t swallow.

    He licked his lips. “It’s been a year since… Since your family died in that crash.”

    Lynn shook her head. Nothing had even come close within the last year. Emily still lived

with their parents – complications from her long-term illness – and her parents rarely traveled because it was difficult on Emily. Her father had even quit his job and taken one closer to home to ease the burden on her mother.

    A loud, sharp crack sounded from the other side of the apartment. Lynn was moving

before she even realized it and her feet carried her to the bathroom. Shards of glass were

scattered across the tile, sparkling like teardrops. Her eyes shot to the remnants of the mirror, cracked into spiderweb pieces. Lynn knelt, trying to peer through the glass to see her reflection, but each shard was only a tiny fragment that could not capture her whole being.

    Lynn banged against the gray backing of the mirror, willing it to give beneath her touch

as the glass had. It remained solid, thudding with each impact.

    Matt arrived moments after her. He swore at the mess, but his attention was immediately seized by the blood dripping from her fists. He grabbed her hands, tearing her away from the closed portal, and the last thing she saw before he spirited her away was the reversed sinister smile of her reflection.

has been a writer since she was a teenager as a way to cope with being neurodivergent. She started with short stories and worked her way up to novels. She enjoys working in different genres, although her favorite is fantasy. She is currently writing her third novel, a sci-fi story set on a derelict spaceship. When she's not writing, she picks fights with technology (especially office equipment) or hangs out with her two stubborn shiba inu.

    The stain on Breki’s new jacket started as a blot on his right shoulder and flowed in rivulets down past his armpit. He thought he’d successfully diverted those terns’ fierce attacks by holding a broom high over his head while he hustled from the field to the house. He’d been wrong. One of the mother birds hadn’t settled for pecking at the broom’s elevated straw bristles and had emptied the contents of her cloaca onto him when he’d trudged through the flock’s forever nesting territory.

    Breki had abandoned his mower attachment as it dangled partially unsecured beside his tractor. One of its connecting bolts had come out and fallen somewhere into the cut grass. Worse than a needle in any haystack! He slapped the side of his head. He didn’t have a spare. Should have made sure all the bolts were tight before he started mowing. It would take days to ship a replacement to the island from the mainland. He didn’t have days. The weather center had predicted a hard rain later in the week, and he needed to finish mowing his grass, letting it dry, and baling it for the winter before those weekend storms darkened the sky. His sheep would need all of that fodder to thrive over the Iceland winter. No one on the sparsely settled island could part with enough of their stored hay, and he couldn’t afford to buy it anyway.

    Breki set the broom next to their house’s front door then found a stick to scrape the blot off his jacket. As he lingered and collected his thoughts inside the entryway, a sweet and enticing smell greeted him. “Svala? Where are you?” Last week, the jacket had been a proud birthday present from his wife. He was embarrassed to show it to her. Why couldn’t that bird have soiled his old, broad-brimmed hat, the one he wore to cover his balding head?

    “We’re here, Husband.” Her voice came from the kitchen door. “We’ve been baking

cookies.”

    “I have two bits of bad news,” he muttered. Svala was leaning next to Leifur, who sat on one of the tall stools at the kitchen’s island. With his lips pressed together, the boy was concentrating on rolling out a patch of dough the size of one of Breki’s broad hands. Leifur’s silky, blond hair fell over his forehead, almost covering his dazzling blue eyes.

    “Tell me the worse one first,” Salva said as she inspected her husband with penetrating eyes every bit as blue as her offspring’s. She stood upright and swung her long, light brown braid behind her sturdy shoulders.

    “I lost a bolt to the mower.” Why did life on their island have to be so precarious?

    “The way your face looks, you must not have a replacement.”

    He stared at his work boots.

    “Hey, Breki…Torfi might have one in that big barn of his. You know he’s kept every little

thing over his long and frugal life.” Their neighbor’s name meant ‘earth covered with grass’, and that man had been supremely successful at growing feed every summer.

    “Yes. I should go to him right away. I hope he’s in a good mood.” Late July was a taxing time for all the island’s farmers.

    “Now, what’s the not-so-bad news?” When she raised one of her eyebrows, soft furrows

formed on that side of her forehead.

    “A mother bird unloaded her anger on me.” He held out his jacket. “Since your name means ‘a bird’ and you’re a mother, maybe you can fix this?” He loved that jacket.

    “Let’s get it away from our cookies.” Svala came around the island’s butcher block top and took it from him. “I can get this mess out. Don’t you worry. And you know what the old ones say—that when a bird poops on you, it will bring good luck.”

    Maybe if a bird had pooped on him earlier, he wouldn’t have lost a bolt.

    Svala set his jacket on the floor next to the kitchen’s door. “You can’t blame them, Breki.

After all, it was their island first, and they work so hard to raise their babies here. They’re just protecting them.” She glanced back at their own precious son. After so many years of trying, they’d given up hope that they could have a child. And then, at long last, she’d awakened one magnificent day with morning sickness. She’d never been so happy to throw up. But as soon as their son took his first breath and screamed his first scream, his exhausted mother had hemorrhaged. The emergency hysterectomy then robbed them of any hope of a second child, so they’d named their son Leifur, for he was their ‘successor,’ their beloved ‘heir.’

    “You know, I read that those birds migrate every year further than any creature on Earth.”

She was talking to Leifur now, and to pay attention, the boy had let go of the rolling pin. “As

soon as the babies are ready, they’ll fly from up here near the top of the world.” Svala raised her hand high. “Then follow the sun all the way to Antarctica at the bottom of the world.” She brought her hand to her knees. “You watch them. They glide through the air riding the currents, with no effort at all. Arctic terns are amazing creatures.”

    “And they’re an amazing pain for me in July.” As tall as Breki was, he was a frequent target of their protective wrath. Svala was a head shorter and could walk close beside him, ignored by the birds. She’d often remark on their grace and dedication. When she and he first came from the mainland and bought their farm, a year before they created Leifur, Breki had been careful to not step on their nests or fledglings. But in recent summers, he’d stopped watching his feet as he patrolled his pastures, and eggs often cracked underfoot. Maybe a few less of them would mean he wouldn’t be divebombed so much the next year.

    “Why don’t you take Leifur with you to Torfi’s?” Svala asked. “While you two are gone, I

can get more chores done and maybe we can relax together later.” She glanced up at Breki.

    There was nothing he wanted more than to relax next to her, but there’d be no relaxing for him today. If he could fix the mower’s attachment, he’d be mowing as long as there was daylight—into the early morning hours and then again when the sun rose a mere three hours later. Then the baling process would begin. The three of them depended on the sheep, and the sheep depended on dry hay being put away right away.

    “What do you say, Son? Want to get out of the kitchen and visit our neighbor?” Breki asked. Seeing another human being had to be good for a young child.

    Leifur hopped off the stool. “Let’s go Papa. I’m all done cooking now.”

    “Cook with your mother a little bit longer. I need to get a wrench and fetch the remaining

bolt, so I can find a good match.” Breki wished he’d thought to do that chore before coming inside. He’d have to face those angry pecking and pooping birds again. As he pushed open the front door and reached for the broom, the sound of Leifur’s soft footsteps trailed him. Before Breki could say a word, his son had shot past him into the bright sunshine.

    Breki called out, “Leifur, don’t you want to help your mother?” His son was halfway to the

barn. Breki jogged after him and caught up once they’d reached the barn’s darkness.

   Leifur held out a pair of pliers. “This one, Papa?”

    Breki slipped the offering into his pocket. “We might need it, but let’s also take a crescent

wrench.” He rummaged in his metal tool box for it. “Okay, now I need you to stay close to me, so the birds leave you alone.”

    “Okay, Papa.” Leifur had already raced outside.

    Breki raised the broom as high as he could and hurried the fifty meters to his tractor. His long strides challenged Leifur to keep up. When they reached the tractor, Leifur climbed into its seat and grasped the steering wheel with both hands, straining in a futile effort to turn it.

    Breki had to lower the broom to begin loosening the bolt. One bird, then two swooped at his hat. He spun the wrench around as fast as he could, until he had the bolt in hand. He added it to his pocket’s contents and raised the broom high. Leifur had descended onto the trampled grass and was inspecting the underside of the tractor’s motor. Breki shook his head at his son’s ceaseless motion. “Come on Leifur. Let’s go.”

    As they approached the truck, the terns finally peeled off. Leifur climbed into his safety seat. “Let’s go, Papa. I’m ready.”

    “First your seatbelt.” Breki stretched the shoulder harness and seatbelt across Leifur and

inserted the clip, relieved to have his restless son secured in one place.

    Ten minutes on the gravel one lane road would carry Breki’s truck to their closest neighbor’s long driveway. Generations of successful sheep rearing had provided Torfi with the largest homestead of anyone on the island. His barn was big enough that it could store countless rolls of fodder while sheltering his huge herd of sheep—and one of those modern harvesters. That magnificent machine had an enclosed cab that provided shelter from the birds that mowing predictably disturbed.

    The crimson barn’s tall peak was visible from a kilometer away. And when the truck neared it, as far as Breki could see, the bright green stretch of pasture behind the barn was mostly cut and the grass lying flat. The massive mowing machine continued creating wide parallel swaths. It was now less than a hundred meters away and shone in the late morning sun. Terns rose and swirled around it. Torfi was not the one inside its cab. His black-bearded son’s head bobbed in a rhythm.

    A mower with a cab and music! Some life!

    The glorious scent of hectares of fresh cut grass greeted Breki as he circled around his truck’s cab to let Leifur out of his safety seat. He grasped his son’s hand. “Come on, my boy, we’ll see if Torfi’s in his big barn.” They marched to its wide entrance and stepped inside the cavernous structure. Breki paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

    “Torfi?” His voice echoed.

    When the sound reverberated around them, Leifur grinned a broad grin at his father.

    “You want to try it, Son? Go ahead?”

    Leifur yelled, “Papa” which became “Papapapapapapa…” The boy chortled with glee.

“Hallohallohallo…”

    But there was no Torfi—not at the equipment workbench, not in any of the stalls, nor hiding from them in a corner.

    “He must be having his lunch,” Breki was beginning to feel hunger. His breakfast had been so many hours ago. “Let’s go to his house.”

    The main part of Torfi’s house was two stories, with a one-story addition for his son’s family tucked back on the side away from the barn. A fresh coat of white paint gleamed. Breki hoped to also paint his weathered house once his sheep were secured for winter, in those brief weeks before the almost endless nights and cold settled in. With today’s pleasant weather, Torfi’s wooden front door was wide open with only a screen door to keep the island’s sporadic midge hatches outside. Today, those tiny insects weren’t a bother.

    Breki called out, “Torfi.” The noise from the mower competed. Breki called out with more

force and knocked on the screen door’s frame. His stomach was growling now.

    “Who’s this knocking and hollering?” Torfi shuffled into view. His full head of snow white

hair stuck out in all directions like a jagged crown, and he held a half-eaten piece of dark bread. “Ah! It’s my neighbor…and his son…come to visit! What can the occasion be?” He squatted low to inspect Leifur through the screen.

    Breki felt his face flush as he admitted, “I lost a bolt on my mower. I’m hoping you might

have an extra one.”

    Torfi lingered at Leifur’s level. “So, young fellow, your father has a broken mower. Broken.

We’ll have to see if we can help him fix it, won’t we?”

    Leifur nodded vigorously.

    Broken. Why had his parents given him a name that signified ‘breaker’ to the older

generation? His father had said it meant that Breki was to shake things up, that it was a proud name in ancient times. The family’s coat of arms displayed an image of broken swords from victorious battles.

    Torfi seemed to be mulling over the coincidence of Breki’s name and his mower’s state.

Finally, he stood. “Come. I have a couple of boxes of nuts, bolts, and whatever in the barn.” He took a generous bite of bread and stepped outside, squinting at the clear sky. “Such a nice day!”

    He hadn’t lost a bolt and been pooped on.

    Torfi led the trio straight to his barn’s workbench. A wooden box sat on its wide surface.

Pointing at it, he said, “You look in here.” He reached under the bench and pulled out a longer box with a cylindrical handle across its top. “I’ll look in here. Now, how big is your bolt?”

    Breki showed him the remaining bolt to his mower. Good thing he’d thought to bring it. At

least he’d done one thing right. The boxes contained at least a hundred bolts of all sizes, plus a random mix of hardware. He began pulling out the bolts that look similar and measured them against his bolt in the dim light.

    Torfi handed him two more, and Breki lined up four likely candidates on the bench top. He was debating which one to choose when Torfi said, “Take them all for now. No sense having to make an extra trip back here.”

    “Good idea. Thank you.” Breki pivoted from the bench and called out, “Leifur, time to go

home and fix our mower.”

    There was no child in the barn.

    “Leifur! Time to go home!” Breki hurried to peer into each stall. No Leifur. Not even among

the playful lambs.

    Breki dashed outside and shielded his eyes from the midday sun. He scanned the treeless yard and fields then raced around the massive barn’s perimeter. No handsome blond boy with bright blue eyes. No miracle child who gave his parents so much joy.

    He met Torfi at the barn’s corner. “I’ll go look in the house,” Torfi offered. “Maybe he went

to look for a bathroom, or to ask my wife for some bread.” He held up the crust of the piece he’d been munching on.

    Breki began probing the waist high grass behind the barn with his arms and feet. “Leifur!

Leifur! It’s time to go home for your lunch—and your mother’s waiting for us!”

    A tern swooped close to Breki’s head. He held up his floppy hat and waved it. “Leifur!”

    Nothing. No “Papa” in response. No curious child, always so happy to see his father. Only a void where Breki’s heart had been minutes ago.

    Torfi reached Breki at a run, yelling over the mower’s din, “He’s not in the house.” The old

man was breathing heavily. He joined Breki in wading into the edge of the tall grass.

    Breki yelled, “Tell your son to stop mowing!”

    Torfi waved at his son with both arms over his head. Yet his son continued mowing and

bobbing his head to a rhythm the older men couldn’t hear over the roar of the powerful engine and the slashing of the rotating blades. An expanding cluster of birds swooped down then up then down ahead of and around the advancing mower.

    Leifur…somehow gone in an instant. Like he’d been plucked from the Earth. Breki struggled to resist the urge to fall to his knees and weep. If he’d lost Leifur, Svala would follow her son into the black hole that would form in their universe.

    Two of those cursed birds now seemed bent on pecking his bare head. He waved his hat at them and screamed, “Leifur!”

    Torfi’s son shut down the mower’s engine, and the terns’ screeches filled the air. Breki had never heard birds make such a racket, even when he’d stomped through their nesting areas. Torfi’s son had stopped bobbing his head. He stood up in the cab and peered over the steering wheel at the massive motionless blades. The flock of terns circling his machine grew by the second into an agitated mob. They gathered in front of the mower and formed a dense throng that seemed more feathers than air, as if they were willing to sacrifice themselves if those broad, razor-sharp blades began spinning again. Mowing now would have surely filled that patch of cut hay with abundant feathers, blood, and fragments of their flesh.

    Torfi and Breki approached the spectacle, and the three men stared speechless at the avian cyclone. Torfi’s son began gesticulating at the grass in front of the mower’s blades. He leaned out the cab’s door and yelled, “something’s moving in the grass—maybe a fox stealing baby terns. Maybe a whole family of foxes to cause such a ruckus.”

    Breki would have ordinarily stood his ground and watched with curiosity for furry predators, but today he didn’t have time for foxes. He charged at the moving grass and the tempest of birds, and as they began to part, he saw tiny hands covering a flash of blond hair.

    “Leifur!”

“So many birds, Papa. I hid from them.” The boy peeked up at his father. “They didn’t hurt

me.”

    Breki knelt and gathered his son against his chest. The boy’s warmth filled the cold

emptiness that had earlier entered his father’s heart. Breki pressed his hat’s soft brim against his eyes then watched the immense flock disperse in all directions, gliding away on countless invisible currents.

grew up in the once small town of West Lebanon, NH. At Cornell University, he branched out into Creative Writing and Russian while majoring in engineering. He then earned his MD from Dartmouth. After almost forty years in clinical practice and teaching, he retired from Duke University as an Associate Professor Emeritus of Medicine. Two cups of coffee and two hours of writing most mornings produced the medical thrillers A Swarm in May, Breath and Mercy, Nature’s Bite, and The Desperate Trials of Phineas Mann (shortlisted for the Hawthorne Prize in Fiction, finalist for the Indie Excellence Award, and winner of the Independent Authors Award in the medical thrillers category). His short story Rabbits was published in the journal Does It Have Pockets. The Monsta’  was published in the spring/summer edition of moonShine review, and Match.com in the fall/winter edition of the same journal. Bail Moneyhas been accepted for publication by Lowlife Lit. He is a certified master beekeeper, master gardener, and has been a Duke Forest Steward.

    As Dr. Gilman withdrew the acupuncture needles from her temple, Riley could feel her pituitary gland peeling back the weight in her prefrontal cortex. One month after weekly visits, Dr. Gilman diagnosed her with dream regression. Which explained why she spent segments of her day staring upward, pulled by the soaring kite of other’s dreams.

    “Ah, a pimple.” He’d exhale. “A size this large is a direct indicator of hippocampus constipation. Hereditary, usually.”

    She never felt at ease in his office. The odd watercolor paintings of pears and grapefruits and the tinseling of classical music.

    He took a snot and saliva sample. Prodded her ears and pulled down the bottom lid of her left eye like a window-shade. Looked down her throat with a wooden stick.

    A baby’s bottle that’s run cold. Bodies hiding under the cabinet of a ship. Each were visions from her ancestors’ lives that invaded her dreams each night.

    “Your dream-mind is stuck rhapsodizing your ancestral lives. What do you do when you wake up from them?”

                                                                          ___

    Midnight purred. Streets, a crisp blue from the autumn rain. Her eyes became nocturnal as her night-walks increased, following Dr. Gilman’s instructions to rip herself from the dream whenever she can to prevent herself from gaining a parasocial tethering to her ancestors.

    “They’re not gifted to you, they’re leant to you.” He reminded her on her last visit.

    Despite the effort, she found herself haunted by her dreams as she walked.

    A spongy herd of sheep arresting the grassy sea-cliff. She could smell the fog rolling from the sea, the squish of her feet sinking in the bog.

    Wariness sandbagged her eyes as she found herself staring into the window

of a little corner store with wines, crackers and olives. As she yawned, she wished she could siphon which dead ancestors had something meaningful to say to her.

                                                                        ___

    “Doctor, isn’t it something I should explore? I mean. I can’t sleep or eat because of this. I’m going to lose my job—I can’t stay awake more than three hours during the day. I keep wondering if there’s something I should be doing. Maybe something I could change from the past?”

    “I’ve seen cases like this before, most patients think they’ve been gifted by God to disrupt ancestral trauma, but then they start to live and breathe more like their ancestors than living in this flesh. They go insane trying to change the past, neither living here nor there.” He sighed, shaking his head.

    She watched him spoon large leaves, mushrooms and bark into a paper bag; smelling of licorice and goat urine.

    “One cup of water, steep for thirteen minutes.” He instructs. “It’s sure to be an adhesive.”

    “Adhesive?” Riley tries not to sound too afraid.

    “Of course!” He snorts. “We got to get you to stick into this life.”

    Riley takes the potion home and pops it inside her spice cupboard.

                                                                      ___

    The dreams were nothing short of unpleasant.

    Gagging on pearls that were shoved down her esophagus. Fingernails being peeled off with some medieval device. Trimming the mustache of a particularly nervous aristocrat. Drowning in a lake filled with warty toads. Fevers and dysentery. A splintered donkey-sized guillotine. And on one unfortunate night, waking up from the smell of her own flesh being burned over a bonfire.

    In daylight, she couldn’t escape their lives because she would hear their thoughts ricocheting off her own life events.

    She realized, her doctor wasn’t wrong about her dreams disrupting her life; a normal bath time ritual was ruined by her left rib remembering a bullet wound. Mishearing people’s words, or forgetting what her current body looked like. Even something as simple as going through the grocery line and hearing someone in front of her speak badly to the cashier caused her to grab a slim Jim, hold it like a dagger at the throat of the customer and ‘demand thee return thy insults.’ She tried to piece together the jigsaw of these ancestors. Jack the Ripper or Joan of Arc? Governess of Marie Antoinette’s second cousin or bodyguard of Rasputin?

                                                                   ___

    Dr. Gilman withdrew the fifth needle from her earlobe.

    “You know, a lot of clients of mine go the Ayahuasca route. Fly to Peru to receive messages from their ancestors.”

    “But then I wouldn’t be getting poked in the face each week by you!” She said,

not without humor.

    She never minded the needles anyway, and vomiting wasn’t really her thing. Still, she couldn’t get her head around people seeking to listen to their ancestors when they could barely withstand a Thanksgiving dinner with their living relatives.

                                                                 ___

    It was a sweltering Summer night when it happened. Riley took the potion, steeped it and left it at her bedside but before she had a chance to taste it, the scent knocked her out.

    She was falling—or, more like tripping, over a large hole in the earth, endlessly careening down, down, down.

    She could smell the burning hair. Hear the slotting of the gilloutine. High-pitch squeal of birds pecking at hollow pits of eyes. Searing buzzes of insects clouding over a bloody wound. Her heart pummeled into her stomach as she fell, her skin itching. Her nails clawed at the dirt walls and she could only hear the screaming growing louder until she realized it was her that was screaming, and somehow the louder her voice got, the easier it was for her to slow down.

    She began to climb. Fingernails caked with death, she delivered herself to the top.

                                                              ___

    “Your potion is a joke.” Riley slammed the door to Dr. Gilman’s office, causing him to jump. He was seated at his desk, fixing the frame on one of his dreary watercolor paintings—this one was a particularly mopey kumquat.

    “Exactly what I thought you’d say!” He gave a sheepish grin.

    “I’m not some insect you can experiment on! You said it was supposed to help me stick myself into this life, not send me deeper in the vortex of ancestral hell!” Her skin was itching and breaking out in a bright tomato rash.

    Shaking his head, he swiftly walked over to his herbs and made her a new bagful of tea.

    She shook her head. “No more games. Give me something stronger.”

    “Stronger?” He repeated, numbly. “Well…there is one thing. I don’t normally use it on patients with such damage to their nervous system.” He said ‘nervous system’ like he was referring to an undercooked liver pate.

    “Please. I’ll try anything!” She laid down on the table and braced herself as he took a cool pad of something that smelled like antiseptic and cleaned her left eye.

    Heart racing, she took a deep breath as he plucked a single eyelash from her.

    “Good root.” He murmured to himself. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Cher?”

    She started gripping the bed, her palms sweaty with anticipation.

    “Is this going to hurt?” She winced.

    She wanted novocaine or heroin or whatever the fuck. She wanted to stop feeling for one second.

    “Depends…you might feel something.” Needle close to her face, studying her left eye like an archer looking for the bullseye.

    “Are you about to stab me in the fucking eye?”

    He hesitated. “Don’t think about it.”

    He had his thumb and index hovering the fat needle.

    Spoonfuls of pearls in her mouth. Croaking of toads in her ears. Every past life flashed before her and then, with a thud, her own life began to prickle.

    Green goo of smearing a beetle with her thumb as a child. The honeyed smell of her mother’s skin. She started to gasp because she wanted it. She wanted the softness and the terror, the sweat and the invisible flight of her breath. Above all; she wanted the chance to reel in the ghost ship that her current life was, and live fully again.

    Faster than a flee being scratched from a dog Riley hurled herself off the table and out the office door. Catching her breath, she realized that she may not have the ability to heal her ancestral death memory, but she now had a keener interest in what was afforded to her by waking up from them.

    She could hear Dr. Gilman yelling out as she made her way down the office staircase, but as far as she was concerned, his ricocheting words were now just an echo of her past life.

is a writer based in Santa Barbara, CA, with work featured in MudRoom, Brown University’s The Round, Talk Vomit, Bodega and Gone Lawn.

It takes time to realize

that you don’t want to die

But it takes even more (time)

to feel remotely close to alive

Like a crow, you cry “why, why?”

Clouds like tombstones appear/sky-high

But unfortunately for you, you’re grounded

Your wings are clipped, you can’t even

fly

(also know as Sylvia Rose) was born in Houston, but raised in East Texas. She used to be a pharmacy technician, but is taking a break to focus on her writing. She is currently working on a chapbook featuring poems involving mental health and creativity.

The knowledge of the elders is breath

it’s in how they move their arms

how they hold their spines

the words they choose even about the mundane.

The knowledge of the elders is breath,

its rhythm is dictated by a beat that stretches     stretches    stretches

the beat of my elders is off,

White Grandma’s beat was interrupted at orphaning

White Grandfather’s silent    silent    silent

Brown Grandfather’s in a rhythm I couldn’t follow

Brown Grandmother’s dead    dead     dead

the rhythms different

conflicting

willing each other not to exist

Without this rhythm, I had to create mine:

eighteen years dancing to White music out of sync

seven years to Brown music off beat

When you create your own music,

it’s loud

filled with rage     and hurt

and the beat is clumsy and off

but there’s a promise in it, too.

aspires to be like a cat, a creature that doesn’t care about the subtleties of others and who will, given time and circumstance, eat their owner. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has appeared in journals from five continents and counting. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.

The celebrations are loud, but the grief is louder,

someone explains from a pulpit in a eulogy.

I don’t know the deceased,

but I know the life cycle of a balloon,

how it’s filled with helium and

escapes from a tiny hand,

soaring only so high

before the pop that drops it

back to earth,

lifeless, carried by the whims

of currents.

If we ride out the most horrid storms,

we risk miscalculating

the latitude of lightning,

the not-so-subtle longitude

of longing,

but ain’t a glowing

sky grounds for testing the waters

yet to come?

I overheard the dude at Starbucks

tell another customer he was a god,

so when he asked for the bathroom code

and then came out with

the back of his shirt all wet,

I pondered who would ever place their faith in

the deity of dishevelment and

guru of not so insightful numerals.

    Desperation is to follow

    as starving is to seek.

I don’t know how, yet I can assure you

my soul will segway to Heaven when

my life on earth has served its purpose,

the man professes to the mourners.

And I can imagine his body

tumbling through clouds,

his being seeping out

like a last breath destined

to be reborn.

is the author of American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026), Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 202)), and other books. His work can be found in The Los Angeles Review, MAYDAY, Yemassee, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, writes, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.

after leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha

after bertha raffetto / bj thomas / after leeknow & seungmin of stray kids

this poem is a glass of water & a water check. hydrate or diedrate, as the poets say. this poem is a hug when you need it most, given by one you didn’t know you needed it from & one you wanted most of all. this poem is poetry; the ones you write, the ones you don’t, the ones that your loved ones share & the community it creates. this poem is the smell of flowers lingering from your mom’s weekly self-gifted bouquet, in the arrangement your daughter makes for you, at your first stop in the grocery store. you breathe it in, you ask your beloved to do the same. this poem is comfort; potatoes & pastries & pot pies & potlucks, found in the company of the loved ones that we keep. light at the tips of the mountains that surround us. sierra that turns sky into pastels, poised between valley & sea. because home means nevada, home means the hills, home means the sage & the pine. this poem is laughter; because it really is the best medicine, my son possesses an adorable variant of krusty the klown, at someone’s dusty ass son, yelling get her ass! banshee screaming with my unhinged besties, until i’m crying, holding my sides. this

poem is rain; the drops that fall on your head, doesn’t mean your eyes will soon be turning red. crying is for you, it always has been. catharsis in cloudbursts of desert sky, monsoons bring back memories, worries saved for another day. this poem is music to my ears, singalongs & random songs. this is our cinema & you said never let it go. i need you, you need me, stay.

(she/they) is a Filipino-American artist from Las Vegas, NV.  An absolute delight (or menace, depending on the day); her poetry explores belonging, femininity, love, parenting, trauma, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and existential crisis of the eldritch millennial. Her work appears in Gnashing Teeth Publishing and Thorn & Bloom, with forthcoming poems in Anodyne Magazine, among others. When she's not writing or otherwise adulting, she is most likely with her kids – watching anime, jamming out to K-pop, or creating art together. Find her on Instagram/Substack: @neeciesnotes

On this day, June 9, 1981

when I was sixteen,

my father died at 7AM.

I remember the crack

as his spirit left, then silence,

then rain, then

a low pressure system making

bleak weather inside my head.

Today is a dreary forest—

Death chimes in again.

Another classmate. Gone at sixty.

Cancer took him, not me.

I wrap my head in songbird chatters

damp echoes, cheerio’s,

remembering the orchard

when I was nineteen

the espresso nights

the smell of honeysuckle

and euphoria

daylilies in headlights

gripping their vulgar orange

my wild heart beating

fresh in the morning sun.

is an emerging poet, avid music lover, stepmom, and border collie mama who muses in the forest of southeastern Pennsylvania.  Her poetry has appeared in several publications including, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Door is A Jar, Woods Reader,  The Mixtape Review, Sublimation, Suburban Witchcraft, and Grand Little Things.

“This                                           is a game really

how long can i survive

                                                   your abrasions

on my cracked shell

I’ve retreated                                                                                        too long

and the record is                   running itself dry

I use                                                                                                  my mandibles

                                                      to make

                                             a patchwork patriarch

every night                                                                                                   I’m

                                      back in that tide pool the moon              a pale witness where you

devour me shallow water                     running deep                             in lungs

                                                                    with every breath                      gasp

I love you                                                   I love you                                    I love you”

But it's a game of telephone again

And all you’d hear on the other side

Of fanned lionfish fins is

“I'll do anything                                     I’ll do anything.                            I’ll do anything”

 is a Managing Editor for Nimrod International Journal. Their writing explores family, nature, and mental health within the realms of fiction and poetry. They have work in and forthcoming in The Shallot, Knee Brace Press,The Amazine, The Basilisk Tree, and more. When they are not writing they love to crochet.

I envy the angels you believed in, the God who held you in repose,

who lived on the walls of houses, campers, & boats. Your voice,

over and over, crossing through my disbelief to the promised land.

The only promise in this life always kept, it grabbed you tight like

His hand. Yours— hands that stood the test of time; hands

that prayed, worked, nurtured. Hands that knew the secrets

I know, too, of loneliness. Hands that sculpted love & light

with a single touch. Hands that knew too much of their own

grief. My father’s grief, an island— grief so vast, it has no choice

but to break. Grief that outsmarts you with its arbitrary arrival,

grief that looks so small when fractured into tiny sentient pieces,

each one a fortune unrealized. Grief, my god, I cannot find the words

to say. You say it like a prayer. Like grace at supper, gone

too long. Say summertime is coming early, imminently, soon;

pick a word from the thesaurus next to the smallest window,

where light somehow shone through brighter than any other room.

is a poet, artist, and student at the University of Kentucky. She has work published or forthcoming in God's Cruel Joke, The Comstock Review, and Heartwood Literary Magazine.

              who doesn't care to be needed

I find myself still walking

             when I want to stand

I want to be unknown & adored

             mythical, mystical, a wind you name

and never blame for shifting.

              the kind someone would think out aloud about

say did we ever really know her?

              then just as quickly correct themselves:

it doesn't matter, she knew me

              I am not trying to leave

but in my tapping heels and clicking ankles

              I know myself to be impatient

when I left home, I didn’t really

             Still no going back

forward motion, tumble-weeding with grace

            and a phantom limb to carry you

towards a bouquet of prickly pears or well fed cacti

             Who blunt their tentacles, bow to your mess

surrender their blueprint for harm to you

             You pinch their cheeks and bruise them

You are less tender than you expected

              they too afraid

of how little fucks you give

              They say there will always be more time

until there isn’t. So leave.

               and when you come back

don't ever stay long enough to be

              the kind of woman         that stays.

is a writer, curator, dancer & overall stage loving human. Her work has featured globally in BBC, Forbes, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Mumbai Poetry Slam, Loyola College, Baby Teeth Journal, Ranger Magazine, The Well & more. She is a current In-Surreal-Life fellow & serves as the Development Committee Chair for the Chicago Poetry Center. She loves sauces, baked goods & all round silliness.

Angels don’t often cry

but there are exceptions

cradled beneath their white scars and 

elephant bone are

fjords of sin gouging without

hiatus, they wonder

is that my son? Should I

jump? That would not be

kind to their Father

Loveless these angels

minced and mastered by

nameless prayers on their way to heaven, the

oasis in the clouds surrounded by sand, lips

parched as holy water cannot

quench what is in the

reflection, useless

sarcastic, wings

Tonight arrives the Son of Man, the

unbecoming of all that was before

vineyards burn as they dust off their

wings, arms raised, in worship

Xander will lead the hymn

yet no one remember Lucifer, the

zealots he once had, and how long he fell

a rising senior from North Carolina, has been drawn to poetry and creative writing for as long as he can remember, ever since he began crafting his own paperback books out of printer paper, crayons, and ballpoint pens.