‘What can’t be explained’, ‘Notes on online therapy’ & ‘Unraveling’

Lindsay Liang

What can’t be explained

Scientists have yet to pinpoint the fault that rattled much 

of the Northeast. It left no surface rupture. (NBC News)

Colors can be easily explained,

but not why I love black ink

and feel neutral towards blue.

And Why love? Don’t tell me

it’s biochemistry or a construct

of society—there’s something 

more—an unexpected whistling 

like grass in a breeze 

or the knock of stone on stone

when the tide comes in.

I know truth is music, by instrument

or accident, an arising of this earth.

I know space is not a vacuum

but I doubt its rhythm

would make me tap my toes.

My grandparents’ cellar smelled 

of oil tank and home-made wine.

The walls were fieldstone 

patched with fresh cement.

Rubber treads disintegrated

on the creaking stairs.

It was like entering a catacomb

Returning to the light, I’d smell 

coffee percolating in a glass pot

and hear the chair beside the stove

rock as if it wasn’t empty.

Notes on online therapy

Her screen tilts so I see
the exposed ceiling
vague shapes of pipes
and ducts
white on white on gray
There must be more
Her words lose themselves
in something that feels
substantial

I am a postage stamp
missing the scallop of serration
glued to the lower right-hand
corner of the screen
So I won’t focus on myself?
Or isn’t that the point?

We tend to speak at the same time
perhaps because we are in synch
Perhaps because we aren’t.
Only half a mile apart
yet tinny waves collide
the pattern of disturbance

I take notes as quickly
as I can which are
barely legible:
Take a long time
before you answer
and we only have
half an hour

At my back
swims an ocean
before me light softening
sheer curtains

She smiles off-kilter
Her voice reverberates
caught in my speaker
or her microphone:

How did that make you feel?

Unraveling

I was her last hope. I was her only hope. I was living on instant coffee and Marlboro Lights and the not-for-individual-sale packets of Milano cookies I stole from the snack cupboard at my night job. 

I worked two jobs. I worked three jobs. I worked uptown and downtown. I worked in the bedroom of my leaky roof apartment. I owned a hammer but could not find it.

She brought a Canadian whiskey box of books. She brought spiral notebooks half-filled with torn out pages. She brought notecards with pink emphasis. She brought an illustrated volume of Jung so large it never fit anywhere. It was hopeless without me.

My shingles were loose, but I had a stained glass window and a backyard. I planted zinnias and tomatoes with a fork and spoon. Leggy and fragile, they held their seed leaves. One morning, when I awoke, everything was gone. Her writing was illegible. Her books were duplicates of mine. The Crown Royal box was perfect for a move.

I was a temporary person. I was a hopeless person. I must have been drinking beer or else  I would have disappeared. My cat ran away. My cat came back. I collected shreds of tobacco but no shreds of hope.

She gave me everything. I was her only hope. I was not a magician but around me, things disappeared. I never drank too much but always drank enough. The cat died of old age. Torn paper dampened and swelled.

Where did she come from? How did she know me? The facts have disappeared. Where did she go?

I carry her things from life to life, attic to basement, state to state. I continue to be famous for not being myself. The cardboard collapses. Paper edgings spiral in my heart. Where is my hammer? I am the person who can do anything. It is hopeless without me. 

Ellen White Rook is a poet, writer, and contemplative arts teacher living in southern Maine. She offers writing workshops and leads retreats that combine meditation, movement, and writing. Ellen holds an MFA from Lindenwood University and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Suspended, her first collection of poetry, was released by Cathexis Northwest Press in May 2023. Visit her website at ellenwhiterook.com.

‘The New Romantics’

Matthew McCain is an author and fine artist with 3 of his novels reaching the top #10 on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. His paintings can be found all around the world from London to Las Vegas with Bar Rescue’s Jon Tafer and Alice Cooper’s Teen Youth Rock Center in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s currently represented by the Bilotta Gallery in Florida.

The New Romantics

these new hearts of stone
this lonesome
everything
we share an intellect,
in our minds,
we would have been great, what with
what fresh hell,
what with wanting
to know us only

we can’t
we must dream
all it was was darkness strewn across an empty
superhighway
we used to be linked to one another
we used to tell secrets to the night
it couldn’t keep

so now it’s a finished work
called cruel blessing
now it’s an animatronic dream of us
whatever we say seems tethered
to the new romantic
to the frozen surface of the lake
what colors of winter
what absence of breath

or sour or some other flavor
of the new romantic
in downy robes, will always think of summer
how to be auctioned-off in a prize contest
how a little bit of a heart can be bitten off and chewed
as a reflection, as a reflection
of the times

S. A. Viau holds an MFA in poetry from Louisiana State University. He is the winner of the 2019 William Jay Smith Award for Poetry, judged by Douglas Kearney. His work has appeared in The Hong Kong Review of Books, The Colorado Review, HASH, New Delta Review, among others. He lives in Maryland with his family.

‘Across Daughette’s Meadow’, ‘Bluetick Evening’ & ‘Crow Song*’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

Across Daughette’s Meadow

Up to my shins stepping gingerly over the grass,
Eyes half-consciously watching the terrain, my
Psyche on autopilot as it mostly is.

Behind me houses of the great and good
Fronting Pelham Road, with this field behind
Them, unguarded, my natural shortcut.

Another time there will be wildflowers and the
Occasional honeysuckle vine, each blossom
Waiting to have its golden drop sucked out.

Now all is dun-colored grass, brown leaves
On pecan trees. But I’m not affected. I’m
Unlikely to be diverted on my way

Toward sixth street, where wait brother
Dogs cats books magazines football. At
School I am engaged, obliged to think.

Yet now, moving through the bleak commons
I anticipate only the weave of
Familiar voices, texture of well-worn

Sensations, comforts of the small eternity
Fixed beneath this bubble of modernity.

Bluetick Evening

Through the patch of brush
To the back gate, nose under latch.
Toss back the head—on to commune with the
Children one street over.

Circulating the coldest nose, wagging with
Circumspect sympathy and wild-
Creature discretion, always on
Watch for stragglers, checking that the

Wolves who populate his mythology are nowhere near—
Yet even so he’ll sniff and
Snuff where the willynilly play of the child pack
Meets the circling foliage, full with its

Myriad odors. Tonight it chances that after
Many reads of the hedge he finds no
Scent of peril. When the children are
Called in, he turns, trots, and instantly appears—

By coonhound magic! at his own back door,
Commenting on his famished hunger and the evening
Chill—making strong music, and then with happy
Whines gulping down what the Goddess brings.

Crow Song*

An old feeling de novo, one
Simply implicit in life, but tumbling-
Trembling that it should once more
Take hold, not so much
Taking harsh because it’s too familiar—still
Thereby with a greater expectation

That it will endure.
November, and that same
Ol’ Raven lit upon Pallas’
Bust, voted 100 times (no less) the
Bird and likeness most likely to
Mirror mistrust. Maybe this time
It’ll stay: Perched, a fable in
Sable, on this dark plutonian shore,

Cawing its bad news
Evermore.

*Written after the 2024 elections.

Paul Pruitt is a law librarian by trade, an historian by training, and a writer by compulsion. He writes poetry in order to experience, over and over, the wonder of words colliding. His publications include poems in Literary Heist, In Parenthesis, Triggerfish Critical Review, The Dillydoun Review, and the Birmingham Arts Journal.

‘SILVER DAGGER’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

SILVER DAGGER

My mother and I were very close. She was demonstrative and loving and often able to overlook  the stupid mistakes kids tend to make while growing up. She passed away more than a decade  ago at the age of 91. Sad as I felt, she had lived a good, long life.  

When I began college, I told her that I didn’t care about spending time with anyone but her. That  declaration seems so foreign to me, considering the amount of close friends who have stuck by  me for years. I wasn’t tested on that lack of self awareness until my good friend Brian was  downed by cancer. I called Mom on the landline (there were no cell phones back then), heaving  breathless and lying prostrate on the floor of my apartment, crying uncontrollably into the  mouthpiece as she consoled me.  

This was back in 1980. AIDS had not yet infiltrated our world. And though I did have other  close friends, Brian was whom I connected with on a level that helped me to understand what  unconditional friendship was.  

Admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital, Brian had seminoma: testicular cancer. This was among the  most common types of cancer affecting men under the age of 30. The word “cancer” scared the  crap out of me, and still does. The physicians removed the tumor-enlarged testicle, and replaced  it with a floating appendage made of teflon, allowing his scrotum to appear “normal.” In the  months leading up to the surgery, I remember showing up at his apartment before he and I would  go out for the evening, which was our tradition multiple times each week. We would listen to  dance music and talk while he was dressing to go out. One night when he was coming out of his  bathroom naked, I noticed his testicles looked unnaturally large. At the time, I thought it was  weird, but bluntly, I just believed he had huge balls.  

Simultaneously, Brian had a diagnosis that oddly ended up being fortuitous. He had a very  uncomfortable abscess that needed to be lanced, forcing him to seek medical attention. While  visiting the doctor for that procedure he thought, as long as he was there, he might as well show  the physician his enlarged scrotum. Brian was admitted to the hospital that same day. 

==== 

Brian and I had a very volatile relationship. We were never lovers. But back then, I’m sure I  claimed him as my best friend. I don’t like using that descriptive scale, since friendships hold a  different importance depending on the circumstances and time.  

I was 21 years old when Brian and I had an emotional falling out (it was the year that J.R. Ewing  got shot on the tv show, “Dallas.” If you’re of a certain age, you’ll know how wide spread that  television event was, not just in the United States, but throughout the world). Brian had gone to  bed with a boy he knew I had feelings for. I was completely caught off guard. And though I  acknowledge that this southerner had no interest in me beyond camaraderie, I felt that the “friend  code” meant that Brian should not be with someone for whom I lusted after. Pretending to be  mature, I told him if that amorous night was heading for a commitment in love, I’d come to  terms with it. But if this was solely about his getting laid, I’d never forgive him.  

They stayed together for a year. I don’t know what the reality is, but Brian told me that he stayed  with him to keep our friendship in tact. That seems very odd to me. Not necessarily an out and  out lie, but Brian was a strange man, so there may be a slice of the truth in that confession.  

I battled to keep my out-of-control feelings in check. Other friends told me it was obvious that I  was in love with Brian. I chose to accept that. Maybe, I thought, there was an unconscious part of  me that had surfaced in a jealous cloud due to Brian entering a serious relationship for the first  time since we’d known each other.  

Looking back, I can say with conviction that I was not in love with Brian. That would have been  an easy explanation. I admit I saw it as betrayal. And though I no longer consider myself to be an  envious man, back then I was wrecked when discovering that my closest friend was sleeping  with someone I hoped would want to be with me. Friendship can be as possessive as any  

romantic relationship. During the entire time Brian and I hung out, he went to bed with different  men night after night. Since I was looking for something completely different, for the most part,  his behavior didn’t affect me. I was searching to find “the one.” And as handsome as Brian was, I  

had not found myself attracted to him. Perhaps that was why his sexual patterns weren’t an  emotional threat.  

Concerning he and I in ways that mattered to me, I had Brian all to myself. Men of all types and  backgrounds would fuck him, often getting their hearts broken, wanting much more. I know,  from what he told me, that Brian was a passionate and romantic lover and most probably mislead  a good deal of these men to believe that he was aiming for something more substantial than a  night or two together.  

To quote a verse from a folk song as recorded by Joan Baez, “Silver Dagger:”  

“My daddy is a handsome devil 

He’s got a chain five miles long 

And on each link a heart does dangle 

Of another maid he’s loved and wronged”  

Replace “daddy” with friend and “maid” with man and you would be illustrating Brian’s sex life,  if described by me.  

==== 

As the years passed, he and I grew apart. I would still see Brian on certain occasions, but our  social lives went in different directions. We became more like distant relatives. 

The last time I saw Brian, his parents were visiting him. Though he hadn’t told me, he was  dying. From AIDS, not cancer. For months, he kept asking me to come to the apartment and take  his records, which frankly, I didn’t want. When I finally did visit him, he was skeletal and  looking decades older than his age. It was apparent he was wasting away. I later realized that a  great deal of the erratic conversations we had been having could be blamed on the disease  attacking his brain.  

==== 

The final scene was surreal, bordering on comical. The four of us sat around a coffee table in  Brian’s living room. His mother, Dot, was seated in an upholstered easy chair. His father sat  across from her in a high back kitchen chair, reading a newspaper. Brian was on his sofa and I  sat across from him, completing the circle. We were listening to disco music and I believe we  were all smoking cigarettes. Brian looked so fragile I thought he might break like delicate  porcelain. We talked as if nothing was wrong, which probably was a good call.  

==== 

Brian died just before his 42nd birthday.  

Early morning, on a Sunday in November, my phone rang. It was Brian’s mother. “May I speak with Della Reese?” Dot asked. 

Recognizing her voice I said, “Dot, it’s Andy.” 

She began to cry. “Brian has passed away,” Dot said.  

“I know Dot. I’m so sorry,” I responded. 

We talked for a while and cried together. Finally I asked, “Dot, why did you ask for Della Reese  when you called?” 

“I’m going through Brian’s Rolodex,” she said, “and I suppose he has you listed as Della Reese.” Though I knew the reason why, I asked, “And you didn’t find that bizarre?” “Not really,” she answered. “I just got off the phone with someone named Hedda Lettuce.” 

==== 

Weeks after his death, I met with Dot at Brian’s apartment. She gave me two of his belongings  to keep. One was a red bomber jacket, which, to this day, I still wear. The other was the ashtray  that had been planted on his coffee table. Painted metallic gold, shaped to resemble an angel’s  wing and permanently stained by black and grey cigarette ash. It now lives on my coffee table as  a permanent reminder of my friend.  

Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 70 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. Insta: @andrewsarewitz. Twitter/X: @asarewitz/twiter

‘On the Glitter Crescent’, ‘Leave the Geode’ & ‘Cotton Candy Fluffs’

Rollin Jewett’s varied past includes acting stints in The Bodyguard, Unsolved Mysteries, Miami Vice and others, penning Carmen Electra’s first film (cult classic American Vampire with Adam West), and being a contestant on Jeopardy. Rollin is also an award winning off-Broadway playwright with plays produced all over the US as well as internationally. As an author, Rollin’s short stories and poetry have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies, including the Night Picnic Journal, Aphotic Realm, Door is a Jar, Coffin Bell, Gathering Storm, and Gravitas, among others.

On the Glitter Crescent

on the glitter crescent

of the moon

i shall find pink dust

that crumbles in my hands

shimmering rainbows

that glint & flaunt

in the waves of moon & sun light

what i wish i could find

doesn’t stay easily

so i grasp my hands on particles

bring it close & deep to me

no one can see

the trail of moonstones

that echo in my footsteps

find refuge in my privacy

some joy

just can’t be shared

without the hurt of heartbreak

so i find rhinestones & gemstones

inside the corners of my palm creases

my acrylic nails

have been to space

& never the meteor

simply just the vacuum of nothing

find the deep hollow

that the man in the moon lives in

i paint my face in glitter

& face the day anyway

he loves

deep moons

which hang from my earlobes.

Leave the Geode

leave the geode

whole & uncracked

sitting on the windowsill for

another day

just left to be

a small gray moon

not the guts of gemstones

spread glittering

for the world to see

take hammer

let these rose quartz

intestines trail

all over the room

calcite & amethyst

hold a force field

to the destructor

the geode is

the schrodinger's stone

but not quite ready to open.

so instead the geode

cracks slowly & waiting

it is the dragon’s egg

seeking warmth

from no mother

an ancient eggshell

that has beauty to offer.

Cotton Candy Fluffs

cotton candy fluffs

held gracefully in a raccoon’s paws

he prepares it to wash

not knowing water will

dissolve treasure in his hands.

the beast known in garbage cans

city alleyways & bandit faces

wants to make sure

every dish they eat

is clean.

so the raccoon takes

what is only seen as sugar fluff

sees reflection in

the cleanest puddle

that can be found

only wants to make sure

this meal is rid from disease.

raccoon is found digging

at water’s surface

asking the world desperately

where this treat

could’ve possibly gone

finds himself wading

in this deep pool

where he finds

sugar substance at the surface

but nothing else.

Mercury Sunderland (he/him) is an autistic gay trans man. He's been published by University of Amsterdam's Writer's Block, UC Davis' Open Ceilings, UC Riverside's Santa Ana River Review, and UC Santa Barbara's Spectrum.

‘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.