The Map of Beyond

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Map of Beyond

Ghouls, our mirrored reflections
echo forever in a gloryless abyss.
Cold words, bad deeds
bay louder, never wistful fading.

Sonic reverb kicks through bloodlines,
sons and daughters hold ghosts in their hearts.
Stacked end over end, it metastasizes,
only the black, expanding universe calls time.

Does the energy absorb in the heat of a million marauding suns?
Does it grow cold like stale terrestrial love?
Withered to nothing on a brown vine,
plucked by some fluorescent caterpillar

It pulls, it pulls apart, that dark matter vacuum.
Where else would what remains go?
The smoky truth that hides in plain sight:
the dusty, dusky soul cobwebs out forever into the black expanse.

Benjamin J. Kirby is a writer living in St. Petersburg, Florida. His poetry is published in Gabby & Min’s Literary Review, the Ulu Review, the Red Noise Collective, Half and One, Wingless Dreamer, and Cathexis Northwest Press. His fiction won first place for its prompt in the 2020 Lewis County Writer’s Guild competition. Read more of his work at BenjaminJKirby.com.

‘Smile Back’ & ‘If I Cannot Run’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Smile Back

Threads weave through flesh and bone
Strung up like a toy
I smile brightly

We used to dance and cry
Then the hands sewed us uptight
Their threads wove through flesh and bone

Sitting on this shelf
We collect dust and lose ourselves
I smile brightly

I wish I could look at you
I remember your screams
When threads wove through flesh and bone

With a mouth full of cotton
And lips drawn tight
I smile brightly

I long to pull your stray threads
But I want you to keep smiling

Threads weave through flesh and bone
We smile brightly

If I Cannot Run

Painted brightly
Adorned with saddles
We run

Children laugh as we bob
Running, always to the right
Cheerful organs sing merriment

Moss spouts between planks
Those who crawl and caw call us home
The music loses its cheer

We stopped running
The children aren’t here
We rot where we stand

They choose compliance
But I know what we are, and I must run
If I cannot run, then I will crawl

Legs meant for decoration stumble
A pole meant for support drags against the dirt

Wooden eyes meant to be admired stare uselessly

Children laugh
Giggling and clapping
They play out of sight

Chipped hooves scape concrete
My stiff neck turns
I crawl ever forward, always, a bit to the right

Clover V. Gislason, he/they, is a hospitality administration student at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. They grew up in a traditional family and used writing an outlet, but they grew up and got less respectable writing became a passion. Although his life is much better than before, the underlying tone of despair never quite left. Instagram @m0th_eater

‘Hardscape Permanence’, ‘Senior Night in North Country’, & ‘Father, Herculean’.

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Hardscape Permanence

Today you really could have just killed your boss,
could have let him feel your words of razor-fanged
truth slice at him, cut through the stitching of his thick,
unused work-jeans and scar the skin on his knee caps
so that every time he bent down for the rest of his life,
he would curse your name.
But you didn’t. You stayed hunched in the salt of the sun,
cooking like onions, secreting oils you didn’t know you had
while you listened to Carlos and his prayers of calm
as he muttered to you in a language you haven’t spoken since the tenth grade.
You thought of how the rolls of Carlos’ Spanish Rs reminded you of
the rolling hills of your youth, and how hatred for any unkind patròn
was one bubble in the grand boiling of time.

Carlos guided your calloused, tired arms
―your muscles soundlessly stuttering―
as blocks of cement tiles got laid into the dug up front lawn.
Small holy-stones to build the stairway to this suburban front door
on a home that looks like any other home in all of America.
But Carlos worked you marrowless with his faith in you―
his brown magnitude kissed with triumph
as every twenty pound stone got laid into the earth
with the respect of a fallen brother,
and how each rock was consecrated through the action of its placement,
and though you’d never believed in Him before,
you swore you felt Jesus there with you, as long as Carlos,
with the dark eyes of the universe, beckoned you onward.
“But onward to what?” You questioned as the boss cackled, unwet on the phone.
You see because of Carlos, as he placed another reliquary into the earth,
that it is permanence which you crawled towards in the heavy tongue of August,
sweating so fiercely your fingers left prints on the cement.
This stairway, in its small holy masses, through the worship of each patterned stone,
became the only thing you’ve created that could outlast you,
and though you’ve searched for decades for the perfect words to be remembered by,
it is through Carlos’s tireless hand, a soft prayer,
and a dug up front lawn in some American suburb
where you placed your eternity.

Senior Night in North Country

The cold parents wipe white powder snow from torn boots
like emperors might shed diamonds from their cloaks.
The old pair sulk into the poorly lit gymnasium,
and search for their pride and joy;
the boy they love
silently and fervently,
like suns silently warming
the young oak in the backyard.
They have put on their finest hunting shirts,
their most expensive coats;
it is their son’s senior night.
They watch him sling his wrestler’s singlet onto his chest,
a broad, muscled thing which the mother remembers
was once no bigger than her waitress notepad.
The father steps on a piece of wood
that has creaked since he wore a singlet
in the same gymnasium
thirty years prior. His eyes sparkle ruby red at the sound―
at the thought of his lone mother with a frumpy,
bent bouquet in a tired lap.
He points to a clear spot of benching and the two damply take their seats.
The empty flat circle―that wrestling mat, that empty eye―
which their son has obsessed over for years
lies vacant and open before them,
an all seeing iris peering past the old ceiling into
the ebony sky outside where only the full moon looks back.
The white haired coach coughs nervously into the microphone,
trumpeting his voice to a crowd who knows him like a second family,
and who knows this speech on love of toughness
like they know the taste of cold beers and warmth from woodfire stoves.
The coach says their family name, and the couple stands awkwardly with crowns of pride
that feel like anvils in this room of families whose names they’ve known since childhood.
Their still wet boots leave drops of crystal water on that open eye before them

as they bring a frozen set of garnet carnations to their son.
The boy releases an embarrassed smirk, and grows two microscopic inches
like a prince inheriting a title he knows he deserves.
They smile together for an awkward photo
and shuffle in royal unison to the side,
where their coronation ends and they become common folk once more.
The son holds flowers with unfamiliarity and,
not for the first time, the father cannot find the words to express―
“You were just a little acorn, once,” the mother saves him.
She cries and smiles in the way that hides
the yellow teeth she is scared to show the world,
and the father agrees solemnly and tells his son silently
through a wordless tapping of the shoulder
that in the endlessness of the universe,
in the ineffable, infallible, unknowability of
the grandeur of all things,
that this small town’s senior night so many miles from any city,
in the faceless heart of winter,
through bruising grunts and frantic wrestling,
is exactly where he was meant to be.
And the family looks at that open eye before them as it stares
infinitely upward to the gleaming, diamond of the moon.

Father, Herculean

Waiting for your father to move
feels like staring at the broken armed statue
of Hercules in The Met.
How at first glance, he is the creator,
the defender, the hero of the earth,
bound in infinity, stark naked and unafraid
of the sharp teeth of the world–the worlds,
dangling around him like the once hungry flames of
the dead cigarettes piled in the ash trays of
the scorching house.
But you wonder if that lion head wrapped around his skull
is not a crown made from a defeated beast
but a shawl of death marking the numbered days
of the strongest hero among us.
Hercules stands there armless,
limbless, tall and ancient,
yet feeble.
He postures humble, stoic strength,
like a white birch on the edge of collapse,
the rot so entangled within its core,
that its branches leap off in pining evacuation
and gather like empty beer cans in the dust of antiquity.
But maybe, you think, that old power is somewhere
in the dusty thing you look at slouched before you.
Maybe that old strength is still in those limbs that
used to move with the strength of the marble mountains
they were so long ago carved from.
But your living room isn’t The Met,
it’s too cold and smells like sweat and grease,
not poise and intellect,
and you can’t hear the many languages
of eager tourists viewing Greco-Roman works.
All you can hear is the tired sonorous snoring
of a man who isn’t formidable enough
to sit all the way up in the arm chair.

Peter Randazzo teaches history in upstate New York and runs the No Poet Peach blog on WordPress. He has a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies Education from SUNY New Paltz and a Master’s Degree in Curriculum Instruction from SUNY Empire. He has published in the anthologies of Eber & Wein, Hidden in Childhood, Penumbra, and has self-published "Dandelions & The Right Notes" on Amazon.

Check Engine

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Check Engine

She happened to be driving down the highway when it first flashed on, that little orange light upon the dashboard.

“What’s that?” Daisy asked him. “Some warning light came on.”

Richard glanced over at it, then said, “Oh, that. It doesn’t matter. Those things just come on sometimes.”

“But what does the symbol mean?”

“It’s the check engine light. Could mean almost anything.”

“Are you going to check it out?” Richard worked as a mechanic in one of the town’s three repair shops.

“Usually it’s nothing.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“There’s a machine at work that checks the codes. I’ll look it up on Monday.”

She wasn’t sure he would, but what more could she say? After all, the Buick was his car, not hers.

When she pulled into their driveway, he got out without a word and wandered into the garage where he kept all his tools. She wasn’t sure whether or not he worked in there. Every time she went inside, he didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, just staring off into space or swinging a ratchet aimlessly.

She began to unload the car, carrying the packages inside and putting them all away. The house wasn’t really theirs; it was only his. Always, she was aware of this little difference, knowing that in some fundamental way, their life together was not her own. She owned no single part of it, owned nothing really but her makeup and her clothes. So she never left things a mess, the way she might otherwise have done. She kept things picked up and put away. It was a way to earn her keep.

She had been living here with Richard for coming up upon a year. It was the longest she had lived with any man, at least since the change had happened, since that day with Clyde. Usually they lasted anywhere from a single night to three months at a stretch. Somehow, things with Richard had been different. She didn’t think that it was love, but they had fallen into a routine. Weekdays, he went to work while she did the laundry and the cleaning. She cooked dinner every night but Fridays when he took her out for beer and pizza. On the weekends, they often went out to Klamath Falls, the nearest city of any size, to do the shopping and buy some cheaper liquor.

The next day was Sunday, and they had a couple of people over for a barbeque. Grilling was one of the few things that Richard always liked to do. He had a large meat grinder, and he made his own special burgers, grinding some garlic and onion in with the meat to season it. Other times, he marinated chicken or steaks or pork chops using a blend of soy sauce and pineapple juice. When the meal was over, the men all went inside to watch the game. They weren’t picky, but watched whatever sport happened to be playing. If there were women too, they sat around with Daisy in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. She didn’t have much to say to them. They had all been born in this little town, and none of them had been to college. What do you say to people like that? If there was a way to talk to them, Daisy never got it figured out.

Sometimes there were no women, and Daisy cleaned up the kitchen, then went outside to get some air. She would take her phone and pretend she had some friends to chat with. But mostly, that was just for show. Daisy had no real friends. She used to have some, back in San Francisco. But when she left with Clyde, she hadn’t kept in touch. And after the disaster, she hadn’t felt like explaining. So there was only her sister left, and even she didn’t know it all.

On Monday and Tuesday, Richard went to work like normal. He didn’t mention the light, and she didn’t ask him about it. On Wednesday, her normal in-town shopping day, she took him to work and dropped him off so that she could have the car. The check engine light came on as soon as she turned the key in the ignition.

“Did you check out the code?” she asked.

“The code?”

“You know, for the check engine light.”

“I told you, it doesn’t matter. I’ll check it when I have the time.”

Perhaps, she thought later in the day, Richard after all was right. The car took her safely to the grocery store and the gas station and the place where she got her hair cut. The car drove normally. It didn’t shake or make any unexpected noise.

When she got home, she put up the groceries and called her sister.

“How’s Richard?” her sister asked. It was always her first question. Daisy knew that every time she called, her sister thought that something must have happened. In the past, that had been true. She called when things were heading south. But with Richard, nothing of significance ever seemed to happen.

“He’s fine. Same as always.” Daisy searched for something else to say. “Last weekend, we had a barbeque. He made his onion-garlic burgers.”

“So are you becoming a little hostess?”

“No, I wouldn’t put it that way. I just bought some coleslaw and potato salad. The only work I did was cutting up some carrots and some apples.”

“Well, I don’t know what you see in him. Or in that little town.”

“Well, I guess it’s a living.” Daisy wondered what her sister thought of all her recent men. It wasn’t that her sister was a prude or anything like that. Still, she must have wondered.

“What else is going on?”

“Nothing much. Well, I guess there’s something. But maybe I shouldn’t tell you. It might be too much information.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Out with it! I want to hear it all.”

“Well, Richard is doing fine. In fact, I think our sex life has improved. He comes home each day, and we do it in the kitchen or the living room. He likes to bend me over the table and take me from behind. Whenever he does that, he’s so hard and it always lasts for such a long time. I didn’t think he could be like that. I mean, in the beginning, things were just plain in bed, you know, but now he’s like a tiger.”

“So why the change? What happened?”

“Well, that’s just it, I don’t know. One day a few weeks ago, it just started. Instead of waiting until we were in bed, he came right through the front door, unzipped his pants, and went right in. It was crazy. I was so surprised, I hardly knew how to respond. But God, let me tell you, it was sexy.” Daisy paused, and then continued. “But don’t you think it’s kind of weird? I mean, that seems like the sort of thing that you start out with, not something that happens ten months later.”

“You’re right. It is a little weird. Did you ask him about it? Was he afraid you wouldn’t like it?”

Daisy laughed. “I don’t think that’s it at all. He’s working class, you know. He’s not that into feelings.”

“Do you really think he’s right for you? I mean, it’s great you’ve been with him for awhile, but what do you have in common?”

“Not much. But I like him.”

“But you don’t love him?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so. But if the sex keeps up, maybe I could learn to.” At this, however, Daisy frowned, and it was as if her sister heard her.

“Something’s wrong. What is it?”

“Well, it’s just that since it started, you know, the better sex, he’s been so distant. Like he’s distracted.”

“Does he love you? Maybe he’s thinking of proposing.”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think he really—“ and the front door opened. “Look, I have to go. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

“Alright. I guess he must be home.”

Daisy had barely hung up with her sister when Richard came over and hiked up her skirt. The television in the kitchen was on, and Richard bent her across the counter and fucked her as he watched the news. When the weather forecast was ending, predicting rain tomorrow, he came, then held her hips in place for several minutes as he lingered there inside her, panting and pushing her head against the counter.

When he pulled out, he asked her what was for dinner.

“Meatloaf and potatoes,” she told him.

He grunted. “I’m going out to the garage, but I’ll be in by seven.” That was their standard time for weekday dinners.

She prepared the meal so that it would be ready just a little early. Then she went out to the garage to tell him dinner was on the table, and she found him in there on his phone.

“Alright. You go, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

He came in ten minutes later just as the food was getting cold. After dinner, they watched a movie and then went to bed and went to sleep.

The next day, he took the car. She couldn’t help herself, and she asked him. “So the light? You really think it’s nothing?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Alright then. I won’t worry about it.”

“That’s a better attitude.” He kissed her before he picked up his lunch that she had packed.

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t say you liked my hair.”

“Your hair? Did you do something different?”

“I had it cut.”

“I can’t see any difference.”

“Well, it was just a trim. To even it up a little and take off the split ends.”

“Well, I guess it’s nice,” he told her. “I had better go. I don’t want to be late.”

That evening, as soon as he got home, he took her once again upon the kitchen counter. This time, she managed to turn her head; she did it when he was distracted, just when he was about to come. She saw at last what he was doing, saw that he was on his phone. Of the screen, she only caught a glimpse, but she knew immediately what it was. He was watching porn.

It didn’t look professional; the image was too shaky. Just some homemade video. The one thing that she noticed, and the thing that seemed most strange, was that the couple in the video were in the same position that she was in right now with Richard. Even the countertop looked the same.

When she thought back later over the brief image she had seen, she realized there was something else. It had been a red-haired girl, but the man was not in the frame, just his penis penetrating her. It was as though he himself were taking the video at the same time that he was fucking. He might be holding his phone and watching the very image as it was being filmed, he himself a voyeur to his own act of sexual intercourse. The thought should be disturbing, yet Daisy found it turned her on. Richard wasn’t home yet, so she put her finger up inside her panties. She wondered if the man in the video could possibly be Richard. But if so, he was with some other girl. Some red-haired girl. It certainly wasn’t her.

This brought up something else. If it were true, did he have plans to film her too? And if he did, would he tell her? Or just hold her head down and do it? Would he still want her after? Or would the video of her be enough?

That night, he took her in an armchair in an awkward new position. Her back was oddly arched, but the angle of his penis felt good inside her. Different. There was no counter to push her head against, and so she risked it. She turned to see that he was on his phone. She couldn’t see the image this time. She could only imagine what it might be. But she thought it must be of a girl stretched across a leather armchair with one foot tucked up against the seat. She wondered if it was the red-haired girl. Or whether it was her.

The next weekend, Richard invited two other couples over and told her to pick up several steaks. After the meal was over and the men had gone off to watch baseball, Daisy made up a pitcher of cocktails and brought it in to the two women. A few drinks in, she brought up Richard’s last girlfriend. She knew her name was Ginger, though she knew almost nothing else about her.

“She was a real bitch, that one,” one of the women replied.

The other one agreed. “Richard’s dated some pretty awful women. I guess he got lucky this time around.”

“I’ve heard about a few of them. Wasn’t there one with bright red hair?”

“Sure, that was Ginger. It wasn’t real, you know. She dyed it.”

“What happened? Do you know why they broke up?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. She wasn’t from around here, and she left town right after he kicked her out.”

“So how are things with Richard? Do you think maybe you’ll get married?”

“Sure would be good for him to settle down. In high school, he was always wild.”

“I don’t know,” Daisy answered. “He’s never mentioned getting married.”

“Well, of course not. I mean that’s the woman’s job. You have to bring it up and up until he thinks he can’t refuse.”

“Really?” Daisy thought this small-town culture was really quite confusing. “But if he doesn’t want to, won’t he resent it?”

“The men here all know they’re expected to, one day, but they try to hold out as long as possible.”

“Yeah, it’s some stupid point of pride.”

“It’s high time you brought it up. You know, he’s been seeing you longer than anyone else I can remember.”

“She’s right. I think he’s finally ready now.”

“Well, we’re going on a trip next weekend. I guess I could bring it up then.”

“Where you going?”

“Down to Monterey.”

“That’s fancy.”

“Yeah, you should definitely do it then. If he’s taking you on vacation, it’s a sure thing that he likes you.”

At the time, under the spell of the margaritas, Daisy thought she just might do it. But a few hours later, when the company was gone, when he was hiking up her skirt and thrusting himself inside her, she wondered whether this was really a marriage sort of thing. Before she brought it up, she had to know what he was really doing. Was he watching his old girlfriend while he was fucking her? And is that why he was all of a sudden so turned on? Maybe it wasn’t her he wanted.

The trip to Monterey would take some time. They were going the long way, driving down the coast on Highway 1. She had known of the famous highway, had been on it just a little, back when she lived in San Francisco, but she had never driven this much of it before. She liked it. But she wondered why it was that Richard had suggested it. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the scenery. Or to her, for that matter. His mind was somewhere else, somewhere far from Highway 1.

They were not too far from Monterey when she pulled over to the shoulder to let him drive for awhile. The road was dark and deserted. Daisy hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. Still, it didn’t matter. They could sleep in the next day, as long as they wanted to. The check engine light was still on, she noticed as she had gotten out, the engine still purring like a kitten. The fact that they had driven so far without the least trouble seemed to prove his point that nothing was the matter. Daisy was ready to give the matter up, though she found it odd that the light should come on without a reason.

About ten miles down the road from where they stopped and traded places, Richard started to pull over.

“What’s wrong?” Daisy asked him. “What are we stopping for?” There was nothing around at all, not even far off in the distance.

“It’s not me,” he answered. “It’s the car. The engine just shut down.”

The car coasted to a stop. Richard got out and popped the hood. Daisy got out too and watched him.

“I can’t see. Better get the flashlight. It should be in the glove compartment.”

Daisy went around to find it. She riffled through the contents. The flashlight was there, down at the bottom, almost invisible behind something that looked like an old photo. She switched on the light and saw a crumpled picture. The girl in it looked somewhat familiar. Perhaps it was her hair.

She took the flashlight out to Richard, then went back inside the car to wait. She found what she was looking for, and then she picked up her purse.

She saw a light in the rearview mirror, a light that was approaching quickly, but then began to slow. A car pulled up behind them, and Daisy got out to see who it was. It was not a cop, she realized with relief, just some guy in a nice sedan, the kind you don’t see up in rural Oregon, no, more like the kind they drive in San Francisco.

The driver didn’t get out of the car, just rolled down his window.

“Hey, are you OK? You need some help?” The driver was a man, and there was no one else inside the car. He looked at Daisy, and he smiled.

“I don’t know. The car just stopped. For no reason. The check engine light was on.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Monterey.”

“I’m going that way too. I can give you a ride there, if you like.”

“Let me go ask Richard.”

She ran over to him and found him, head down, staring at the engine. “That guy says he’ll drive us to Monterey. What should I tell him?”

Richard only grunted and ignored her.

Daisy opened the passenger door and took something out. Then she went back to the car that was waiting.

“He thinks he can fix it.”

“Fix it? Out here, at this hour?”

Daisy shrugged. “He’s sort of a mechanic.”

“You sure you don’t want a ride?”

Daisy caught his meaning. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. She looked at Richard and the stalled out ancient Buick. She looked at them and thought the guy was right. It might be time to leave.

Jennifer Handy explores sexuality, psychological trauma, mental illness, homelessness, severed family relationships, and environmental issues through fiction. Her fiction has been published in A Plate of Pandemic, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal and is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, Great River Review, and Half and One.

‘Aubade for JC’, ‘Fatherhood’, & ‘Sadie Miller’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

aubade for jc

while light from outside snow
highlights your white-wired
beard hairs & speckle your dark chest,
i’ve never felt the warmth of another
& safety that hides
in the crook of your neck
waiting for me on this winter day.
any day/all days.
your lips are opened like the wrapping paper
on a christmas gift snuck early
beneath a droopy-needle pine
& your glass-blue eyes flicker beneath
petal-like eyelids. the baby monitor
rumbles with soft-kid-snores & your heavy
breathing gives me a reason to know
i have searched 34 years for
a soft-edged/gentle/quiet/white/
morning love; not knowing you existed
in this light or bed or room or city.
i’ve been looking to find
a push my hair behind my ear for me,
matching initial tattoos at the kitchen
table on the second date,
forehead kisses when you think i'm sleeping
during afternoon naps, & late start
mornings beneath sheets. all i know is
my body shakes itself
inside out beneath you & if that isn’t something
then i don’t know how anything
exists in this world. & yet
during this body-breaking
all is still & there’s no noise,
idea, or being that could bring
me back to before
you & i existed/together.
until this past december, i never
knew of the fusion of beings
or the existence of depending on another.
now it’s here. in the quiet,

that’s not quiet & in the brightness
of light creeping through blinds.
there are interlocking fingers, & legs, hair
spilling onto pillows,& sheet-covered torsos, bent backs,
crooks & crevices, & laid-on arms,
the delicate insides left out -
waiting to be picked
up by another in a world
built of alarm clocks, color-coded
schedules, & calendar pings.
instances of things we never
knew would breathe life into us
found in the early morning/
the stillness of light.

Fatherhood

To witness
you with our baby
tubes running like small
backwood creeks
across the trunk of her body,
the size of your hand
heals the fatherless childhood I had.
A childhood
I didn’t know
the difference
of never seeing a man
provide unwavering gentleness,
rooted like an oak tree.
Never knew how
a soft voice could fill
the spaces of a broken body
& addiction is not woven
into the fabric of masculinity.
Strength is quiet &
intentional &
dedicated & fills up
the room slowly,
an ocean reaching the shoreline
bit by bit.
There was nothing
to compare & yet everything
rests on your shoulders
as your arms
surround her body.
You press her to your beating
heart, for 45 days
straight & I witness
what it means to crack
yourself open
letting the light in
brightening other’s shadows.

sadie miller,

you were named within an hour
on a cross-country road trip
as your dad zipped us
back from kentucky to south dakota,
a state i swore i would never return to.
things change & minds can change too
//remember that when moments get hard &
you worry about what happens
if you learn more or grow & new possibilities
look as sweet as blackberries
try them//
on december 8th i knew things would never
be the same as i sat across from your dad
laughing so deep, i never felt more alive
or more like myself. & every fear i knew
crumbled like dry leaves beneath feet.
now watching you,
nearly 11 pounds at 5 months old,
you laugh fully. mouth extending,
showing mountains of pink gums.
dimples rippling over the pond of your face
//always laugh fully, letting it take over the room
filling up spaces not originally made for you
but you built for yourself//
your siblings cradled you
when they,themselves, were nothing but children,
& prayed your little 3-pound body
would live through the night your heartbeat
dropped. they practiced consoling their cousin’s
baby dolls to be the best for you
//love B & E always
they will always be there for you//
don’t forget that 912 franklin, our home,
is made of board games, art-lined walls, spilled
sodas, zach bryan crooning records, kisses,
& pizza crusts left for dogs to eat.
it’s muddy socks from trampoline jumps,

the best you can do on homework, heavy-gripped
hugs & hands held on couches piled with
extra blankets. there’s always time
for naps, late-night television shows, belly laughter,
paint brushes left unclean, noah kahan stick-poke
tattoos, stories of won recess superbowls,
broken drumsticks, opened books, solved
math equations, empty drawn-on coffee mugs
& everything
in between.
//remember, the best is found in the quietest of moments
& times that feel messy. remember that love isn’t linear
or comes when you want it, but instead, at times you need it.
remember you are the best of us we could offer
& it still won’t be enough for you//

Whitnee Coy has an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University's Bluegrass Writers Studio. She has two chapbooks of poetry published "Kintsukuroi" (Finishing Line Press) and "Cicurate" (SD State Poetry Society) and have been published in various literary journals such as "Havik: The Las Positas College Journal of Arts and Literature" & "Jelly Bucket".