When people asked why I left Chile, I alternated between “I needed a job” and “I was tired of reggaetón.”

To be honest, I left because I couldn’t sleep.

Something was off with the apartment I shared with my little brother Andrés in Santiago. Objects kept dropping, sliding off counters. If you were in the bedroom, you’d hear forks or knives making their way to the kitchen floor. If you were in the living room, you’d hear a faint clatter of trinkets in the bedroom.

To make sure it wasn’t all in my head, I invited a few classmates over for Carménère and pasta. They heard it too. And when the last drop of wine was gone, they bolted. “¡Chao!”

*

We moved to Santiago when Andrés turned twenty and declared himself an artist.

We lived on the seventh floor. “Heaven’s number,” an old neighbor announced—mischievously—in the elevator. We’d escaped the mold, the smell of firewood, and the damp walls of our childhood in the South.

It was fun for a while.

But when the Big Sad got the better of him, I caved. I didn’t consult with him before packing my bags. I just left. And later, when he stopped answering my texts, the guilt snuck up on me.

*

In America, years later, a waitress asked Tom and me if we needed refills.

“I’ll have another,” Tom said. He had little scars all over his face, and his left eye was a dim opening, the result of an IED.

I was on the reckless end of depression, in need of novelty or shock. I also wanted to see what a chiseled hero wore off-duty. Charcoal jeans and Converse All-Stars. Feeling buzzed by the bourbon, I let my knee touch his fidgeting leg. Leaning closer—close enough to get a whiff of his scalp.

A fruit bowl in front of us had a Jesus figurine leaning against limes and tangerines. Plastic zoo animals and G.I. Joes crowned the nativity scene. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was going out with him. He’d been deployed several times, and they would’ve seen him as a walking red flag.

He showed me an app on his phone that counted the hours, minutes, and seconds until his retirement.

After his third round of whiskey, he told me he missed the war. He missed the nights in Afghanistan. But I’d seen Restrepo and thought the Korengal Valley was hell. How was that possible?

“In combat, your mind is seriously jammed. You have a mission, and that’s all you can think of,” he explained.

“There’s no room for worrying, being scared or sad. There are no bills to pay, no wife to deal with, and the future doesn’t matter.” Afghanistan was the only place where he slept like a baby, knowing everyone in his platoon had each other’s backs. Ever since his homecoming, he’d felt alone and listless.

He also hated guns. They had no place in civil society, he said. He was so sick of stitching up gunshot wounds from Denver’s rowdy Colfax Avenue that he transferred to a sleepy mountain town. These days, his shifts as a paramedic were mostly uneventful. There were nut allergies, overbearing moms, and, on rare occasions, a hiker mauled by a bear who needed to be airlifted.

We were the same age, born a few days apart. And we both loved hyenas. I told him that the females give birth through their giant clit.

“They’re tough as fuck,” he said.

*

He let me touch his tattoos. It saddened me when he called one of them cheesy.

“One of my buddies did it when we were stationed in Baghdad, and we were bored out of our minds.”

“Looks painful.”

“Very.”

Hovering over his heart was the silhouette of a man pressing a gun to his head. “A reminder of when I hit rock bottom. We were playing Russian roulette, and I pulled the trigger… Twice.”

Without his clothes, he looked like a pitbull. I told him I liked his body. “It’s covered in scars.”

*

The ease I felt around Tom was akin to the camaraderie I’ve only ever found with third-culture kids: people raised between languages and borders, who feel queasy when asked about “home.” The ones who leave.

*

On a day my roommates were out of town, I invited Tom over.

He followed me into the kitchen and grabbed my face. “The mouth is a large brain,” I remembered from Jana Beňová. I led him to the garden, where the air was warm and the moon bold. He asked how I was doing.

“I’m okay.”

“Are you really?”

No. But I didn’t want to sour the evening, so I talked about chimpanzees. “When they’re bored, they gang up on solitary males and beat them to death, just because. And they use sex for favors.” Much like humans. Tom added, “You have no idea how awful people can be when they think no one’s watching.”

I didn’t want to know. I scratched his back, and we stayed in a motionless hug for a while. He broke the silence to ask if he could go down on me. I half-smirked, “Yeah,” and he pulled me closer to the edge of the bench. He knelt on the cool grass and lifted my dress.

*

Last summer, I was in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with friends. We were sitting on rocks, waiting for the sun to go down. Waiting for the bats. That’s when I learned that vampire bats don’t actually suck blood. They lap it up like a dog.

*

Back home, in my last year in Chile, my brother Andrés had fallen head over heels for an older woman named Isabel. They were one of those couples who broke up and got back together, over and over: shouting, crying, slamming doors. During a drunken rendezvous, she got pregnant.

Since the relationship was already doomed and neither of them had wanted children, he suggested they “take care of it.” But Isabel decided to keep it, and it took only one look at Aurora for Andrés to become attached to the baby girl. Isabel weaponized his suggestion to keep him from ever seeing her.

He despaired.

He stopped eating. I’d come home and find a zombie version of him, dragging his feet across the increasingly sticky kitchen tiles. Or passed out in the bathroom.

I called my dad and said someone had to keep an eye on Andrés. He accused me of feigning worry so I could steal the apartment.

I didn’t speak to either of them for months.

“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” I kept telling myself as I planned my exit to the United States.

*

Tom traveled a lot and handed me a copy of his keys.

“So you can write peacefully… or what is it that you do?”

“What if I steal from you?”

“I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. Things are just things, you know?”

This time he was headed to Missouri, where they’d add pins to his already busy chest. He acted like it was a drag, and as he packed, he swore he hated wearing his fancy uniform.

“Why?”

“Because some people—people who know nothing about me—treat me with respect.

*

It was already nighttime when I first got off the train near Tom’s place. I quickened my pace and attempted a poker face as I walked past the men drinking on the sidewalk. It was too dark to make them out clearly, but I could tell they were the kind of guys who make the American flag look scary. Like a warning.

By the time I arrived at the building, I was paranoid. What if it was a trap? What if the key didn’t work, and I had to go back out again, in the dark?

But #207 was unlocked, and it was quiet, as Tom promised.

There were a few pictures on the walls and several military decorations. A leadership award for his performance in Iraq. A silver plaque declaring that his sacrifice, loyalty, and performance of duty aligned with the Army’s Warrior Ethos. I cringed when I read that his “selfless service to this nation will never be forgotten.”

*

Tom’s closet was just as meticulous as the rest of his place.

The uniform I’d seen in his photos hung beside a helmet and a pair of boots so heavy I couldn’t imagine how anyone could run in them.

I knew I was intruding when I reached for the metal box tucked in the back. Inside:

snapshots from smoking breaks in the desert, the portrait of him I studied so hard before we met. Standing before a Humvee, Tom’s face was covered in dirt. He was squinting, and it was hard to tell which direction, or what, he was looking at. His pillowy lips remained pink. He looked handsome, in a Marlon Brando type of way, or a less puffy version of DiCaprio.

There were also homecoming shots, Tom kissing a bulldog in his arms. Pictures of him and his ex-wife. She was almost as tall as him and much prettier.

At the very bottom, a Polaroid. A white cake with black icing that spells out:

I’M SORRY I BLACKED OUT, TRIED TO KILL YOU & ALMOST GOT US ARRESTED.

*

In our Santiago apartment, I often caught a shadow slipping at the edge of my vision. I told myself it was nothing, that it was childish. Still, whenever Andrés was out partying, I couldn’t sleep unless the lights were on and 3rd Rock From the Sun or Seinfeld played on a loop.

One night, while working at my desk, I heard footsteps. I felt a stare burning into the back of my neck. Prickly. I turned around, ready to snap at my brother. But I was alone.

*

The last time I invited Andrés out for dinner, I could tell by his white-clenched lips and the pulsing blue at his temples that he wouldn’t finish his meal. He’d hardly touched the ravioli or the glazed Brussels sprouts. He was telling me about political prisoners and why we should write them letters. They’re often a lifeline—a you-still-exist nudge that can mean the difference between hell and a good day. I nodded, hoping to reignite his appetite.

“How’s the mural going?” I asked.

“I fucked it up.”

I knew better than to push, so I steered us back to political prisoners.

“What would I even say?” I asked.

“Literally anything. Tell them about your day, or the last thing that made you laugh. Just don’t ever ask why they were sent away.”

“Okay, if it’s that important to you…”

“It’s not about me.”

“I know.”

“Give them prompts, something to spark their imagination. Would you rather questions are always fun.”

Andrés’s jaw loosened, though his neck stayed vigilant. There were new greys in his haphazardly shaved face.

My little brother had always been sensitive. His doe eyes welled up easily; his voice was a fraught whisper, or else swelling, a boiling timbre.

*

“How can you sleep with a guy like that…? What if he snaps?” my Colorado friends demanded.

Fair enough. There was plenty I didn’t know about Tom. I knew he’d hurt people. But I also knew that he was trying to course-correct, volunteering with refugees.

Most importantly, our bodies liked each other. He enjoyed playing with me until I was left dry-mouthed and raspy.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking we belonged together. I understood the healing aspect of touch. And it was only trapped between him and his new bulldog, Spade, that I felt safe. Sometimes Spade slept awfully close to me. I could feel his warm sighs and the dainty stroke of his eyelashes against my bare back.

*

Several months went by before I felt a sudden urge to see Andrés. A gut-punch that had me panting as I hopped inside the crowded subway.

“Andrés?” I called out when I reached the apartment.

I was met with silence and a chill draft that made me regret my skimpy tights.

“I know you’re in there.”

His bedroom windows were thrown open, and it was freezing. Andrés was lying on the floor, his legs unnaturally bent. Overdosed. He was already blue. When I lifted him, his weightlessness shocked me.

The doctor told me later that if I had arrived a few minutes later, we would’ve lost him.

*

In my dreams, I’m usually back in Chile, in that apartment. The wind cracks my lips, reddens my eyes, and every shape erodes into ash. Sometimes they manage to pump his stomach in time. Other times, Andrés is hanging from the ceiling and I’m a few seconds too late.

Tom lay awake beside me, earbuds in, listening to podcasts. Every so often he rested a hand on my hip or pulled me closer. He said that when he dreamt, he was back in Iraq. They were speeding, fleeing gunfire. “It’s not that easy to stop a Humvee.” He stared into a little girl’s eyes right before they ran over her. Other times, it was a man he shot in the face. The man survived, his jaw dangling from a tendon.

We rested our eyes until five in the morning, when we surrendered, got dressed, and drove to LaMar’s for coffee and donuts. He dropped me off on campus. I suggested we go to the movies, or get dinner sometime. He agreed but never made it happen.

*

The last night I spent at Tom’s alone, the place was a mess, Spade shed fur everywhere. His trash can was brimming with Jameson bottles. A single hair clung to the faucet. Up close, it looked blond. Long enough to suggest a woman. Maybe he had a friend over? But there was nowhere to sit. Then I noticed straight black hairs in one corner.

A ginger curl tangled in the sheets. My heart hiccuped, and I blushed.

My hair was blue.

*

Tom once told me that if I really wanted to understand how he felt, I’d have to read Karl

Marlantes and watch The Hurt Locker.

“Pay attention to the cereal scene.”

“Cereal?”

“Yeah, this whole country is like that fucking cereal aisle.”

*

I finally watched The Hurt Locker only after Tom and I broke up. Inside the grocery store, Jeremy Renner’s character, Staff Sergeant William James, is tasked with picking cereal. His hyper-vigilance is contagious. He’s overwhelmed and rendered useless in front of boxes of Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Nesquik. The camera’s low angle exaggerates the seemingly endless repetition of labels. It’s unnerving. It’s almost like the hallway in The Shining, but bombed with fluorescent lights.

Then there’s a scene when James is home with his wife, and they’re prepping dinner. He argues that they need more specialists like him out there in the Middle East to deactivate the bombs that are killing so many people. He tells the story of a man in an Iraqi market who offered free candy until he lured enough children and civilians around his truck. When he detonates, he kills roughly 59 people.

His wife replies, “Can you chop these [onions] for me?”

*

It’s 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic keeps almost everyone indoors. Heeding the CDC’s guidelines, I haven’t touched anyone in months. Initially, it seemed like a blessing in disguise. But I was promptly slapped out of my rosy-colored stay-cay.

Baudelaire said society had three kinds of people: the warrior, the priest, and the poet. Each deserving respect, each needing the others. I’m not entirely convinced, but it makes me think of Tom.

Out of the blue, he texts:

“Can I see you?”

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic.”

“I could really use a hug right now.”

“…”

I cuss when I reply:

“Me too.”

When Tom holds me and repeats, “I got you,” I appreciate the sentiment. I run my fingers through his hair, tracing a “C” behind his ear, hoping it’ll soothe us both. But I’ve begun to see a shadowy figure from the corner of my eye, and I know it won’t make any difference.

Giving you a piece of me means sanctity
unfinished; unblemished is the duty of the heart
whether it is liver, lung, or kidney that you seek.

Skin, vein, tendon.
My eyes are two offerings soaring
over blue, over incandescent rays so bright
they burst to flutter

perfect passion
to give, to proffer my hand so you can get
out the hole of unnerving unknowingness.

Notice the soft tissue of my devotion’s love—
the warmth, the pulsing nativity.
We are more than evolved cells and systems,
not here on Earth for only ourselves.

Sisterliness. Brotherliness. A fellow feeling
of unselfishness reverberates to any core
living, breathing, feeding
to be the channel to the next flare of stars.

Giving you a piece of me feels like destiny
invariably written.
O’ what a world to be ink on another’s story;
to be flame, spark, electricity.

           Hope
                       actualized          incarnated.

My blood could river you towards faith.
My gift could project you into a future.
Grant my soul the ultimate deed,
cast what's left to the flowers and to dreams.

You and I are life eternal, friends of a never-end.
I extend my best parts to you, even the intangible ones.
Use it to rewrite this poem, conjure your own epic.

I give because I believe
body and life doesn’t begin with bone;

                          it begins with opportunity.

Those who tuned into Charlie Kirk’s memorial with the volume on are most likely to remember the straight-forward fascism of Stephen Miller’s encomium to blood and soil. Those who watched with the volume off, however, were maybe struck by the not-quite-fascist, but nonetheless curious catharsis that rippled through the crowd. The atmosphere was distinctly Baptist, and to many it was alien.

Josiah Hesse wrestles with this reality in his new book, On Fire for God. The book has a clear agenda, to trace the cultural and economic forces that gave way to the Christian Right of today, yet its author is much more fair-minded than the thesis would suggest. Despite growing up queer in a wildly repressive Pentecostal environment, Hesse has written a searching account of his religious upbringing in Iowa, where the people are well-meaning, but their methods of moral and spiritual instruction, glossolalic or otherwise, can be ruinous.

A solid portion of the book explores the ruin, tallying up anecdotes of every flavor of hypocrisy and self-abnegation imaginable from Hesse’s youth and young adulthood. Some stories are hard to read, while others are darkly hilarious (Hesse’s dad was a wild dude), and though it may sometimes feel a little voyeuristic, the reader never senses that Hesse is pinning his family, friends, and neighbors to the cork like some exotic moth destined for secular taxonomy. At worst, you might call it auto-therapy, but Hesse is clearly withholding certain stories, and never devolves into outright score-settling. Despite being an “exvangelist,” Hesse has not lost the Christian impulse towards grace when dealing with his subjects.

Hesse weaves his personal story into the broader narrative of the Christian Right, all while staying focused on his hometown of Mason City, a small, erstwhile farming community that punches above its weight in cultural relevance. He traces the blast radius of the economic bomb that was the Iowa Farmers Crisis, making a good case that the dispossessed farmers were being lunched on by wolfish pastors who demanded “seed faith,” or money beyond the tithe, a sort of holy insurance policy that looks an awful lot like Catholic indulgences if you squint. Amid all this, Hesse pulls back the curtain on a strange perpetual motion machine of grievance and despair that has served as a formidable engine of right-wing politics over the past half-century, demonstrating that the gospel of prosperity invariably yields to an unforgiving politics of austerity.

The writing stays pretty wet throughout, and despite its often weighty content, the book never feels too heavy to pick up. The parallels he draws between the huckster antihero of The Music Man, a canonical American play set in a lightly fictionalized Mason City, and the avaricious reverends that prowl its streets today is a narrative stroke of genius that serves his thesis well. He sometimes gets a little carried away, seemingly pulling out a Music Man quote at the drop of every pork pie hat, but after reading this account, it’s the sort of zeal you can forgive.

Born in the ivy-cloaked womb of
          West Virginia,
fireflies swam through sticky summer heat
          while unspoken resentments clung
to the skin of generations.

From a Michigan smile
          carried in a suitcase to Wheeling backwoods,
chatter of cheerleading
          halted by soft cries soaked in August’s humidity.

From Motown trouble conjured by tricky teens on
          the streets of Kansas City,
and banishment to Five Points,
          songs were cut short by the life of another.

The peeling paint of a worn-down Race Street porch
         still smells of cigarette smoke and selfishness;
decades of disappointments fill forgotten ashtrays
         used by those who could only exhale more hurt.

The rich soil of
         this Whittier jungle,
is soaked in tears of joy,
          clumped together with factory sweat
and unspoken tragedy.

Labored breathing, cared for by the arms
          of Colfax and Colorado,
transformed trauma into resilience.
          Self-hatred steaming on Colfax and York
became a generational pendant;
          a weight on the chests of those still to come.

Born of two lost souls who thought they were searching
          for true love;
only, infatuation was found
          and marked with an expiration date.

Hot tears
         dripped down flushed skin.
Vows were made
          to never again
fall prey to the viciousness of vulnerability.

I am the shovel
          unearthing this brokenness
buried in our backyard.
          I am imperfect rebirth;
nursing the heartbreak
          eating away at our roots.

ADDRESSES TO CIVIC CENTER PARK, LABOR, AND AMBITION
	After “New Addresses” by Kenneth Koch

by Marissa Forbes


Since you’re all gathered here 
today, let’s talk about our pasts. 
First, I’m sorry I didn’t pay much attention to you 
except when sprawling my body—swollen with life—
on your grass, or later when my still-nursing son 
tripped up your ramp and ripped his lip-tie. 
Thank you for giving me a scare 
and another year of night-time bonding with my baby. 

I was surprised! Switching my usual 
Wednesday walk through you 
to Thursday was a game changer. The crazy whizz 
of food truck engines drowned out my kids’ whining and crying— 
oh, what a joy to share fries 
with a toddler and a teething baby in you 
on a sunny day! 

Calm down, Labor, it’s your turn.
If only to appease your fickle affection 
for pain. Labor, by definition, is the process of childbirth.
(But you knew that.)
I’ll always remember the sweet relief 
of a hot bath after three weeks of you 
being non-progressive. Notice how I said, “always remember?” 
Because never forget is a double negative 
and I’m trying to be more positive.

By another definition, you are work. 
My working hands labored—for years 
with paint crusted under my fingernails,
typing, typing, typing until 3 am, rubbing babies’ backs 
at bedtime, cooking, cleaning, holding my tears.

You came with invisible contracts. 
Contraction, by definition, is a shortening of the uterine muscles 
occurring in intervals before and during childbirth. 
(But you knew that too.) You and contractions are married 
forever—no matter how miserable you are. 
I wonder if you ever get good sleep 
because contractions didn’t just prepare me for you, 
they prepared me for the process of becoming larger—
for making room, for living a life of not knowing 
how I would feel for years 
and years about being only Mom.

Back to you, Civic Center Park, you just love our cyclical nature: 
seasons filled with pieces of poetry-filled paper 
stuffed into diaper bags and naps I took 
with my babies under your trees. 
New seasons filled with marks in the margins,
tracking gallons of weeds pulled and 7:30 am
rainbows arching across your great lawn.
 
I scale Capitol hill on hot days now, my body reminded  
every time of crawling—tree to tree—moving 
slowly in the moments before becoming a mother, again.
Eyes rolling from asphalt to sky, 
in gorgeous agony, rolling from the golden dome 
to his crowning head between my legs. 
My path from you, you beautiful park, 
is why this little pocket of 14th Ave. 
in Denver is most sacred to me.

Lest not forget labor in the fashion of flowers. 
Zinnia Zesty for all the creatives I carry, 
Lantana Yellow Ice to remind me 
that even pretty things can be dangerous, 
Celosia New Look for the flame shape inside of me. 

I replaced paint in the creases of my clothes 
for you both. For dirt and verbs.
In you, my sweet Civic Center, labor looks different.
Do you see that greeting all three of you will finally connect  
threads I don’t want to cut? You both bring me preciously close 
to kissing my dearest, most delirious friend. 

It’s finally time! I must formally introduce you all: 
Civic Center Park-Labor, meet Ambition.
You have always been the most attractive, 
most humbling, the most ancestral root.I love you 
for the long days and short years 
that led me to my dreams. I’m learning to let go 
of my anger over lost time, sacrificing myself  
for an ex-husband. More importantly, you’re teaching me
to balance you between my time in Civic Center Park
with the food trucks and flowers, and my time with being 
only mom, and my time filling pages. 

Oh, Ambition, you beautiful seed!
You are my labor of life, planted 
in the park of my heart. 

Dad took me to the record stores on Colfax just
to breathe in rubber and the mohawk gel
and I’d play at identifying Davis, Coltrane, Blakey:
the trumpet from the trombone.
You and I beat the sneakered sidewalk—here!
See the rhythm!
It is in the mouth of the dishwasher,
the spine of the sax,
sleeping like sisters where the curtains filter February 
until it is no longer February.
In my high school graduation tee and your black dress,
I’ll spit out your coffee, blaze your name 
on the billboard at Forest,
run when you say go.
This, like jazz, is the vitality of things.

We leave Pete’s like we always leave Pete’s, hands swimming
in the lights of a passing Toyota, and you tell me 
what the secret is to make a really good grilled cheese.
In ways like this, we are not afraid to say “I love you” to each other. 
Maybe in another life we could
make glory from Denver 
like San Francisco to the beats.
But girls don’t suffer like poets; they suffer like girls.

Soon, we will leave this haze for another haze
and forget the longest commercial street in America. But for now, 
kicking rocks off the sidewalk that never ends, 
we are thinking about crazy things: 
we could live in a commune, we could dance the whole road. 
We’d be famous, I say, we already are: consumers of the greatest 
and only service that the infinite winding thoroughfares 
of landlocked America have to offer, 
which is, of course, 
somewhere to go. 
Once in the early nihilism of high school
you got hung up on asking if I felt like a “member of society.”
Now I say: on Colfax Avenue, I damn well do.

“If you have it with whole milk, not skim,” Jenny says. “Those good fats. Not to make a value judgment,” they quickly add, and as they speak, they can feel the argument’s inanity, but Elle’s the one who asked if Jenny is a breakfast person, making Jenny marvel at the way in which meals can be used as adjectives. How any noun can become a descriptor, worth using to describe yourself. As if describing yourself is one’s purpose in life.

“If you were a burrito,” Elle had said earlier, “what kind would you be? What fillings, or toppings?”

“Huh.” Jenny scratched their cheek. “Bell peppers? Or tofu? Tofu because I’m soft. And something straight men avoid.” They smiled and shrugged, and Elle laughed.

The question was prompted by their dinner location, which Jenny chose. They’d taken turns planning dates, with Elle picking first, then Jenny, then Elle, and back to Jenny for this, the fourth.

You haven’t been? Jenny asked over text a few days before, referring to the restaurant. It’s great. Like a Chipotle, but better. Right down the street from my place.

After sending, they worried that Elle might think they were being suggestive, as in, not far from my bed, which isn’t what they meant. Really, Jenny suggested the burrito place because it was a low-stakes commitment. They felt uneasy about leading someone to believe that they had time to prioritize dating when all of life’s forces pulled them otherwise, as if conspiring, colluding, shaking Jenny awake to a thousand small noises sounding an alarm. Something needs to change, life seemed to be saying. But it didn’t give specifics.

You should let yourself have a fun night, a friend texted. Really, what is life if not time

What is time if not money? Jenny said.

Forever running out

I might be too weird for her, Jenny texted back. She’s mentally well. It’s crazy. She’s done nothing strange. Nothing at all

Lol, the friend answered. That’s strange in itself. Especially these days. It’s impossible to be well. Unless you’re a psychopath

Jenny laughed at the message. They remembered when they were in their early twenties and their dad warned that they should do a background check on every man they date—or every man she dates, in his parlance—because you never know. Jenny’s dad might not be as worried about women and psychopathy, but he would be worried about Jenny dating women, what that would mean for them, and him, and their family, if he knew. Maybe I’m a psychopath, Jenny said, replying to their friend.

Nah, the friend said. You care too much. You’re just avoidant

Jenny laughed again. After texting more about their friend’s relationship status, Jenny concluded that it couldn’t hurt, they might as well go on a fourth date—a number they rarely reached, they realized, when they paused to think.

So they made an easy plan. Invite Elle to grab a burrito, catch up on the past few weeks. Maybe they’d kiss at the end, and that could give a better sense for what to do moving forward. It was impressive, really, that they’d waited this long to be physically intimate—maybe I should try NOT rushing into sex for once, they’d texted their friend days before re-downloading dating apps. No more drunken hookups! they proclaimed. So after a quick dinner, they could go to sleep early—walk back and fall asleep with their cat in the double-bed that filled half of their studio apartment.

Somehow, however, they find themself here, on the second floor of a lesbian bar, a historic site of their drunkenness—though now they’re sipping soda water, which is an unheralded success—having consented to kissing this person who politely asked.

“I’m sorry,” Elle said moments before. “I can’t focus on what you’ve been saying. I’ve been thinking about how much I want to kiss you.”

That’s not exactly what Jenny had been thinking, which could’ve been a bad sign. But that’s the thing—they needed to think less. Or, at least, they needed to think with their heart rather than their head, their therapist says. As if that made sense.

Jenny is amused, now, seeing the scene from above as it plays out: two thirty-one-year-olds making out on a couch in public, doors down from a pink doughnut shop along the longest road in the country. The road—or rather, the commercial stretch of the road, which everyone knows—is the right distance for a marathon, so people run marathons along it, Jenny told Elle, who mentioned completing marathons. But not that marathon, since she’s new to the city, and thus, newly experiencing the lesbian bar.

It was a stark contrast, stepping into the dark space—with its sludgy floors, black walls, rainbow flags and lights flashing neon—after being out in the spring day’s sun. Jenny wanted to keep walking, but Elle showed excitement when they walked past. Before stepping in, Jenny swallowed hard. They thought back to when they were new to the city, almost a decade back, when there was louder resentment toward newcomers, and wonders if, now, they are one who resents more than being resented—if they’re neither, or both.

“That’s super impressive,” Jenny said to Elle about the marathon. They discussed this at dinner an hour earlier while waiting to order, shuffling along the assembly line that permitted them to contribute to the making of their own burrito, to select toppings that ostensibly reflected their personalities—what they desired, what they were.

“I’m a chorizo kind of girl,” Elle said. “Not onion, not olives. But I wouldn’t be opposed to pickles.”

This made Jenny laugh, earnestly, seeing strangeness in Elle—but Elle was quick to say she was kidding, she was thinking of electrolytes, how her cross country coach encouraged them to drink pickle juice straight from the jar to prevent cramping. Turns out, Elle is big into running, which is part of her evening routine. Not only that, but every morning, she wakes up at 5 and attends a HIIT class.

“I love classes like that,” Jenny said, pleased to share such an interest. Jenny wanted to explain that they’re athletic, but not in the long-distance running sense—though they aspire to be a runner like they aspire to spend less time on their phone, and to be vegan. They also aspire to keep a routine, to move through the motions of hygiene sequentially, rather than chaotically, sometimes forgetting steps. One day, too, they’d like to shop only at farmer’s markets and local grocery stores, like Elle. Being in a relationship with Elle would make them a better person, Jenny determines.

The subject of dietary preferences came up, as it does, on Date #1, when they ate cookies, and again on Date #2, when they drank mezcal. A natural progression, Jenny thought. It’s something Jenny would never do—step inside a shop devoted to a single type of bakery item, fork over the money for a cookie as flat and large as a dinner plate—but Elle noticed the sign and suggested they take a detour, an improvised part of her plan, a walk in the park. It was a fast walk, too—which Jenny might attribute to nervous energy if Elle wasn’t strikingly calm, more likely one who saw, in all things, an opportunity for exercise. Jenny used to be like that. As they walked, couples pedalled swan boats across the small lake—or giant pond, depending on your perspective, Elle said. She talked about macrophages and cytokines, and research she’s doing on nutrition and stress in low-income kids with divorced parents, for her PhD in neurology and psychology. Jenny was struck by this, how Elle is intelligent and curious—working to understand. And it made sense, then, the fact that she consistently dressed like a therapist, in beige cardigans over white camisoles. Slacks, ballet flats. One day, she’d be a social worker for kids and young adolescents.

“Queer kids,” Elle said. “So they can have the love and support I was lucky enough to have. Which reminds me. What pronouns do you use?”

Jenny felt inordinately grateful when people asked, and inordinately embarrassed at the strength of their gratitude. Using gender-neutral pronouns was new, and a source of doubt, because it called attention to itself, requiring others to put forth mental effort and think about Jenny more than they already did, which is the opposite of what they wanted. Really, they didn’t want to be considered. Or not, at least, as a woman, despite their feminine name, which was a sore point.

“If you could change your name,” Elle said, toward the end of Date #2. “What would you change it to?”

Technically, they could change their name—just as anyone could—but Jenny didn’t feel aligned with any alternative. They said they weren’t sure and volleyed the question back to Elle, who said she was happy with hers.

It was a good name, Jenny thought, and proceeded to order their fourth drink, while Elle continued sipping her first.

“Alcohol doesn’t do that much for me,” she explained.

Jenny couldn’t help but feel envious, and a little drunk. “If I could—if I was mentally well, like you, I’d be a therapist too,” they said. “I like talking to people. And asking questions.”

“You’re good at asking questions,” Elle said.

“And if I was mentally well,” Jenny continued. “I’d sell my eggs.”

Elle laughed and raised her eyebrows.

“It’s good money,” Jenny said, serious. “The world is expensive. Especially for someone who is doomed, apparently, to the nonprofit realm. It’s like, I can’t function if whatever job I have isn’t meaningful. I’m fated to a low budget.”

“I can only imagine,” Elle said, empathetically.

Jenny had already told Elle about their workplace, how it was overstimulating, how they loved their coworkers. It was an anti-hunger organization—looked like a food pantry on the surface, Jenny explained, but they did work in a bigger way, helping individuals procure benefits, find housing. They grew gardens, talked policy. Tried to make systemic change.

“Amazing,” Elle said, and scooted closer to Jenny, who was busy scolding themself for what they said before, for unattractively joking about being broke and mentally ill. Surely, they presented as a basket case rather than a basket of something appealing, like apples, or roses.

Woah, their friend messaged when Jenny used the phrase. The phrase “basket case” comes from WWI, a rumor about men who were dismembered being carted around in baskets

Oh god. Gnarly, Jenny said, with a grimacing emoji. Maybe she likes dating messy people, like a true therapist. Always on the job

Your kids would turn out well. What happens when a workaholic and an alcoholic get together?

Jenny laughed out loud. After all, Elle didn’t seem dissuaded by their disclosures. Around 11 p.m., the two went separate ways, but Jenny sensed some communication in how Elle held the hug longer than the average person might. On the other hand, Jenny couldn’t make sense of Elle’s confusing affect—how she narrowed her eyes and smiled in such a way that could either be interpreted as psychoanalyzing or fantasizing about Jenny sitting on her face, even when discussing banalities like the weather and dog breeds. It was all the more strange because, in moments, Elle seemed more like a doll than a woman—likely related to the fact that she was 5’0”, according to her profile. Not that height was a variable Jenny seriously considered—if anything, in this case, it worked complementarily, since they fit together in a puzzle-piece sense, like Elle was one of the pet rocks Jenny clutched when they were a kid.

The day after meeting for drinks, Elle messaged to ask when they could see each other again. When it became clear that their schedules wouldn’t align, Elle insisted on making time, offering to bring sandwiches during Jenny’s lunch break on her way to the airport, off to visit her mother in Sacramento for a week.

Jenny hesitated before agreeing. At work, they’d typically grab something from the warehouse—like yogurt reaching its last moments or a microwavable rice pouch. They’d work on paperwork through the break and leave a little early. But when they thought about it, it seemed nice to eat something fresh and typical, like a sandwich, with a woman who did such typical things, and who was sweet enough to take the initiative. They were also intrigued by the intimacy burgeoning between them—though the flame was tenuous enough to run the risk of being extinguished without consistent, little blows of breath, which would be made difficult by Elle’s travel, right before a camping trip, followed by full weeks of work for both and booked-up subsequent weekends.

Since when was life as a single person so busy? Jenny would wonder. They compulsively opened and closed the dating app, not wanting to continue scrolling, not wanting to stop. Their connection with Elle felt pleasant—but was “pleasant” enough?

In the bar, Elle moans, rolling her head back, then toward Jenny, nipping at their neck. Elle’s hands move more intently from Jenny’s collarbone to their breasts, on which Jenny tries to focus attention, which is simultaneously simple and challenging, thanks to the sports bra that presses their too-big chest to their torso in a vice grip, like a body-wide rubber band. One of those solutions that’s on par with the problem.

Elle shifts her weight onto her knees so she’s straddling Jenny, maximizing points of contact. Jenny wonders how they’d look if someone saw or heard them, mouths closing and opening. Jenny thinks of fish, wondering if they look like fish, if their movements look organic, if the sounds Elle is making are real, more sounds than the occasion calls for, Jenny thinks. But that’s not fair. Why are they such a critic? Elle is just embodied. She pushes her hips up against the base of Jenny’s torso, which is twisted toward Elle, while their legs still face forward, too big to fit on the couch—the starched, scratchy couch which must have furnished who knew how many gropings over the years, Jenny thinks. Hopefully, mostly consensual.

“You’re so, so—sexy. I like kissing you,” Elle says. She brushes the bottom of Jenny’s ear, then down the center of their chest like she’s drawing a line, splitting the rib cage in half.

“Thanks,” Jenny says. “Me too. Or, I mean, I like kissing you too. You’re sexy.”

Jenny cringes at what they’ve said. Sexy is a word that’s never felt right. When spoken, it feels like a lie, optimistic rather than descriptive. Or maybe Jenny has the wrong ideas about what should be discussed and what should go unmentioned. Maybe Elle is attracted to them just because of their body—which is ironic, given the doubt that saturated their past, how ugly they felt, how they couldn’t believe former partners who said they weren’t. What a luxury those worries seem like now, the ones that filled one’s late teens and twenties, back when beauty seemed like the piece that would complete the loneliness puzzle—out of reach, but able to be found. Now, securing a life partner is no more glamorous than summoning the patience, the forbearance to search, search, and search, to find someone who’s aligned with—or can tolerate—your preferences and habits, lifestyle and budget.

Elle sits up. She pushes her hair back and grabs her drink, finishing it with an ice-slurping sound, draining the gin and tonic from the bottom of the glass.

“You know what?” she says. “I think I’ll get another. Maybe even a beer. Want one?”

Jenny picks up their own sweating glass of soda water, which they’ve barely touched. They don’t need a beer, no—they need to be clear-minded, sleep well, and wake up fresh. That being said, Elle’s the one who asked. And this is a date, time to relax. As good as intentions can be, they only get a small role in the larger play of things.

“Sure. Why not,” Jenny says and smiles. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Elle stands and turns toward the stairs. “What kind?”

“How about—” Jenny stops before saying they’ll take the strongest and cheapest one on draft— “whatever you’re having.”

Elle nods and smiles, touching her lip to wipe away what might have been Jenny’s spit. “Be right back,” she says.

When she’s out of sight, Jenny slinks back, deeper into the couch. They don’t want to, but they think of their friend. They manage to resist for a handful of seconds, but soon it’s overpowering, the urge to extract their phone from their back pocket and send a message.

Interesting things here, they text. Idk if my sex drive has left the room, at the most inconvenient time. Or if I’m not into her

They wait, thumbs tapping the black screen. After a moment, they’re happy to see an answer.

Been there. That’s been happening to me with Taylor. Did you get the ick?

Jenny frowns, trying to pinpoint it. They think about the previous dates—nothing negative with #1. A bit of blurriness around #2, thanks to the drinks. There was that moment, they remember, when they were sitting at the bar and Elle asked a question—what might be a classic, gay requisite pulled from some queer canon. “When did you first know?” she said.

It bothered Jenny, the fact that straight people don’t have to talk about such a thing, that women who date men don’t need to provide a historical account of their proclivity. And the idea that anything could be distilled down to one moment, when life was emergent.

Jenny had taken a gulp of their beer and set it back down on the coaster, which was soggy. “I don’t think it was a lightning bolt,” they said. “More like a slow evolution.” They paused to take another drink. “Even when I first kissed a woman, I didn’t feel anything.”

Elle raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t get me wrong—I did later,” Jenny added. “I just, I think I had to warm up to the idea. There’s something about my brain and my body. It takes time for them to get on the same page.”

“Right. That makes sense.” Elle smiled encouragingly. She spoke in a tone that made Jenny feel like a client, a child she therapized. “When you were little, though? Were there signs?” she pressed.
Jenny scratched their chin. “Honestly, not that I can remember. I didn’t understand what sex was at all. Didn’t know that pleasure was a thing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. My parents, you know, were super conservative.”

Elle nodded, and Jenny wondered if they were less of an interesting queer person without such a history—if backstory played an essential role, like it did for superheroes.

“What about you?” Jenny said. “There was a moment when you knew?”

Elle looked pleased to be asked. “My nanny.” She blushed. “That sounds weird. She was our babysitter, you know—a teenager, not an old lady. But I was so little. Only five.”

Jenny had nodded and smiled, unsure of how to respond. Now, they force themself to look up from their phone and around the room. Their eyes are drawn to a strand of multicolored lights that, at some point since their time on the couch, have switched on. It stretches along the railing and up to the ceiling, past posters of drag queens. Right beside the stairs, Jenny sees a large stone Buddha, perched on the ledge like a bird, not quite smiling and not quite frowning. It’s strange—normally those things are smiling, Jenny thinks, if they’re remembering correctly? It’s a big, gray creature. Not bashful, but not imposing.

I don’t think it’s the ick, Jenny texts back. But maybe I want something about her to be different

Jenny’s therapist wouldn’t like this answer. “What do you like about her?” the therapist had asked last week, when talking about Elle. “Can you focus on what interests you, rather than what doesn’t?”

When Jenny first saw Elle on the app, they appreciated the picture of her standing in front of a research poster at a conference. She stood out against the many Patagonia-clad women donning snowboards or skis, and ones holding a warrior pose in front of macramé plant hangers and tapestries. Another picture showed Elle sitting in a wooden canoe on a glassy river. It looked like thatched roofs in the background, outside the country—but it seemed that she was comfortable there, not a tourist bent on extracting experience.

Jenny hears footsteps clodding up the stairs at the same time they feel their phone vibrate once, then twice.

“Here we go,” Elle says, appearing, holding the necks of two bottles of Blue Moon.

Jenny sits up, smiling and tucking their phone facedown between the couch and their thigh. “Thanks,” they say, reminding themself that not every beer needs to be strong and delicious. It’s better this way. It’s what they deserve for going against their own resolve.

“Don’t forget about self-compassion, Jenny,” their therapist said on many occasions. “Be gentle with yourself.”

Before they know it, they’re making out again. Jenny tries to take a deep breath, but inhales Elle’s hair. It’s brown, soft, and delicate, held back by a dainty scrunchy at the base of her neck, with wisps falling out. Her skin is soft too—preternaturally soft, tan, and smooth. She smells like essential oils, but Jenny couldn’t say which one. The softness is almost unnerving, Jenny thinks, and feels warty in comparison, with smatterings of freckles and moles, like a toad. Or like a briny, bumpy pickle.

“What?” Elle says, tilting her head and looking up. “What are you laughing at?”
Jenny shakes their head. “Nothing,” they say, still smiling, which is the opposite of reassuring.

“What is it? Come on.” Elle tries to sound playful, but seems concerned.

“Nothing, really,” Jenny says. “It’s just—” they laugh. “It’s just funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“Everything.” Jenny shrugs. They gesture vaguely toward the room. “Everything is funny. Look at where we are. No one else is here.”

Elle glances around, takes a sip of her beer, manages a smile. Then she moves her hand to Jenny’s stomach, hip, waistband.

It occurs to them that they don’t want to be here. A small rectangular window high on the wall shows that the day is slipping, almost gone. In the silence, Elle shifts, and Jenny hears the suction sounds of skin pulling apart. Sweat between. They feel tired, and embarrassed—they’re too old to be pushing each other’s shirts and bras up like this in public, when they can go to one of their apartments. That’s the logical next step.

Jenny sits up. Elle turns and tugs down her camisole which has gotten caught under her bra, revealing something on her hip—a cursive letter in ink.

“What’s that?” Jenny asks, grateful for something to say.

“A tattoo,” Elle says.

“Well, yeah. But what is it?”

Elle twists, pulling the camisole up. “Bahala na,” she says, dragging her finger across the word as if she were reading it like a line in a storybook.

“Bahala-la what?”

“Bahala na. It’s a Filipino phrase.”

“Oh. That’s cool. What does it mean?”

“It pretty much means letting go. Leaving things in the hands of fate.”

Jenny nods. “That’s nice,” they say. “I need more of that in my life.”

“Yeah, I get the sense that you like to control things.”

Jenny blinks, then laughs, uncertainly. “What?”

“No, I don’t mean it like that, nothing rude! It’s just something I noticed. Probably because I’m controlling too, at times.”

“Right,” Jenny says, forcing a smile.

Elle tugs her shirt back over her hip. She reaches over and taps her fingers playfully on Jenny’s arm. “Do you have any tattoos?”

“No,” Jenny says, then finds themself glancing at their watch. “What do you think? Should we get going?”

Elle lets out a breath. She presses her forehead against Jenny’s chest, and Jenny freezes, not sure what to say next. After a moment, Elle pulls away and starts to push her arms through her cardigan’s sleeves. She struggles, then laughs. “I’m kind of tipsy,” she says.

Jenny wonders how that’s possible, given the one mixed drink and sip of beer she had. They finish the last of theirs and scoot to the edge of the couch. They feel their legs bounce. Somehow, they’re hungry again. It seemed like they ate a lot, since they ordered nachos—but they did end up sharing it with Elle.

“Please, help me, this is huge,” Jenny said as they set the basket down, gesturing to the nachos, ordered on a whim, partially because Elle ogled it on the menu. “And you can save that for lunch tomorrow,” Jenny said, pointing at Elle’s burrito—still wrapped in foil and pushed aside—remembering how she mentioned that her days had been so long and work-filled, she’d been forgetting to eat.

“Aw. Thank you,” Elle said, smiling, then going to grab napkins. When she returned, they both became absorbed in plucking chips from the platter that was replete with zucchini and corn, salsa and tofu. They ate, talking about work and the upcoming weekend. What struck Jenny as strange was when Jenny stood to refill their water cups, and when they came back, Elle had taken the liberty of tossing crumpled-up napkins on the nachos, as if to say, they both must be finished.

“It’s so nice out,” Elle said, standing. “What if we take a walk? Maybe—” she glanced around, then pointed arbitrarily— “this way?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jenny said, then paused to consider. Elle had smiled quickly, and Jenny was surprised, really, at how pleased she seemed. So they picked up their things and Elle grabbed the burrito, nestling it in the crook of her arm like a baby, or a football. Walking toward the sidewalk, they passed the trash can, and Elle didn’t even pause before tossing it in.

Jenny frowned. “You’re not going to save it?”

“No,” Elle said. “It’ll get gross, sitting out for hours.” She reached for Jenny’s hand and smiled, and Jenny smiled back, feeling distracted. As they walked, they passed several tents and folks with boomboxes and sleeping bags, shopping carts and baskets. The burrito could’ve fed one or two, if Elle hadn’t been so wasteful, or thoughtless.

“Is that an obsessive thought, or an authentic thought?” Jenny’s therapist would have said. “Curious mind, or worried?”

It was obsessive, yes. Maybe curious and worried—maybe something else.

“Does pursuing this relationship seem authentic to you? Or would you rather be investing in others?” their therapist would continue.

Their friend would find it funny—all of it, the burrito toss, the supreme stiffness of the couch, Jenny thinks. Now, in a practical sense, it would be nice to have the burrito for Elle to eat to help her sober up before driving home. Not that she’s too drunk to drive—right? She can’t be.

“I’m sorry, my hand’s wet,” Elle says, grabbing Jenny’s, after drinking a wax cup of water. She wipes her palm on a pant leg and laughs. “It’s so fun here. We should come back! This is your neighborhood?”

Jenny says, “Sort of,” and forges on through the thick of the bar that’s filling like a bathtub with people and sound. After squeezing between two groups, past a bouncer, and through the main door, they’re on the quiet sidewalk.

“Wow. It’s cold,” Elle says, folding her arms. She follows Jenny in the direction of the restaurant, her car, and Jenny’s apartment—a walk that’s too quick, not giving Jenny time to decide what should happen.

Why does the way back always feel so much faster than the way there? they imagine messaging their friend. Prob because you know where you’re going, they’d add. You know where you want to end up, and you know the path

Jenny becomes aware of Elle’s hand in theirs once they stop walking, and Elle takes it back.

“This is me,” Elle says.

“No, that’s not you. That’s your car,” Jenny says.

Elle looks at them and blinks before smiling and tilting her head. “Which way are you?” she asks.

“I don’t think I have a way,” Jenny says and frowns. They know they sound like a child. “But my apartment is over there,” they say, gesturing. For a moment, they consider not asking, but then they do. “Are you okay to drive?”

Elle exhales slowly. “Yeah,” she says. She sounds uncertain, but Jenny imagines it might be uncertainty around how the conversation is ending, how they are wrapping up the night.

“Okay. Well. Get home safe,” Jenny says.

“You too,” Elle responds.

Jenny lingers. They shift from foot to foot, feeling obliged, but no desire to reach out for a hug. Finally they smile and nod, then turn to walk. When they glance back, they see Elle’s face, and rather than sadness, she looks at Jenny with pity, or something complicated.

They turn again, seeing the restaurant, and then the trash can on the sidewalk, the one into which Elle tossed her burrito. There’s a person sitting on the ground beside it, with legs stretching over the curb, humming some tune. Jenny leans forward to get a glimpse and notices how comfortable the person is, wearing shorts and a stained white t-shirt, with scrawny and tanned arms and legs. Jenny’s stomach signals hunger again, and they have a crazy thought, or a compulsion, to look inside the trash. Jenny goes so far as to step forward, crane their neck, at which point they have a better view of the person who is so immersed in an activity that they seem startled. They glare up at Jenny, then curl into themself, over what they’re holding. It’s wrapped in aluminum foil, and they’re chewing. As if to say, nothing has been wasted. An interesting thought, Jenny thinks. But they aren’t attached to it or anything.

This could be titled: An Ode to Home. Or. Park Hill Stand Up. Or. Park Hill in Four Remembrances. Or. Hillside Stargazer. Or. Home is Where the Bodies Are Buried.

By Dominique Christina

You couldn’t get anywhere in Park Hill 
Without walking by Granny Phifer’s house.
A coral, peeling, weathered flat that looked 
Like dessert cake with white frosted awnings 
Sugared in decay and the crabapple trees that spilled
Their fat, bitter bulbs on the lawn that she 
Religiously watered, once in the morning,
Again at dusk-
Shuffling out the house in pink sponge rollers and
Corduroy house shoes made for a man with the heel
Pressed down and flat,
Still, she was white-lace glove dainty  
 Sit up straight and Yes ma’am delicious.

If you wanted to go to the playground in my neighborhood
You had to go by Binky and Bunky’s house.
A red brick ranch style home that
Kept its secrets pushed behind painted and repainted 
White screen door with the inevitable beehive
Stuck just above it.

Everything about that house had a sting.

But all fried, everything
All the time, everything.
Oxtails, chicken legs, and collard greens
Peppered and salted just right til your
Lips smacked wetly when you walked by 
Except-
You never just walked by—
You stopped in,
Left your shoes by the door,
Listened for the rumble,
Said yes please to sweet potato pie
And maybe got your hair braided
If Miss Susie felt like climbing in
To tackle the bramble and quiet
Your brushfire locks.

If you wanted to get to the corner store 
You had to go by Richard’s house.
A boy with no conscience.
And no plans of growing into one.
His mama was a Sunday school teacher…you know…

For the irony.

He didn’t have a daddy.
All the worst boys in Park Hill
Didn’t seem to have daddies
Just dirty words and grasping hands.

If you wanted to get anywhere
In my neighborhood on Saturday
Morning you had to hide
(From Jehovah Witnesses)
Because they were coming early.
Real early. Very early.
Too damn early in the morning. 
Pamphlet-heavy chics dressed in pastels
Peddling redemption with no
Real roadmap cuz it meant
I wasn’t gonna get to cuss the way I needed to
So I did what I’d seen everyone on the block do

I hid behind the curtains and waited for them to leave.

I watched ‘em go over to the next
House and not get in there either.
They never did seem to get in and
Maybe that’s why it took God so long to find me
Cuz I was ducking out and hiding from everything
Including myself but it took me years to learn that.

If you wanted to have your first kiss
In my neighborhood you did so…
Willfully.
In the alley behind that nasty girl’s house whose
Mama chain-smoked Camels and was never home 
To catch her kids doing anything.
You leaned into your galloping want
And waited for a messy exchange
That sent saliva down your jawbone—
But you wore eyeliner after that.
Thought you knew what a woman was,
Thought you knew you wanted to be one.
Back alleys are not the right places
For this kind of clarity.

But you held onto it.
Because that’s what you do.
When there’s nowhere else to go,
When there’s nothing else to hold,

When the place you are is the
Only thing telling you what
You will become,
You hold into it.
You hold onto it and call it
“Home.”

I pulled into a Shell station on the corner across from the Safeway and put in my debit card. I filled up premium gas instead of the normal unleaded for the first time in my life. They had a middle option called “plus” but I decided if I was going to get some high quality gas, I would get the best a man could get. Each type of gas was marked with numbers. 87, 89, and 93. Each number was respective to their alleged quality. I didn’t know what they meant. But seeing the big jump between 89 to 93—a whopping 4 units of something or another—I felt like splurging. I took out the nozzle and put it in the gas tank. With the pull of the trigger, gas started pumping into my car.

Sunset would probably come in two hours. That gave me enough time to buy everything Angie had written down, get back home, and then go with Angie to Art’s apartment.

I returned the nozzle to the holster and got back in the car. I turned the key and saw the needle on the gas gauge go all the way to the right and felt good seeing that. I drove across the street to the Safeway. I cruised up and down four rows of the lot, driving with my premium gas, before I found a decent spot. I avoid parking in spaces with cars on either side but in this case the store was quite busy and I didn’t have any other choice.

Walking across the parking lot towards the entrance, I pulled out the shopping list Angie had written for me and practically stuffed in my pocket. She was at home waiting to take out the carrot cake that was baking in the oven. We still needed some things to bring to Art’s place. I should really say Art and Judy’s place, but Judy had just moved in a month or so before, and this was the first time, as a couple, they were inviting us over. But I knew the apartment as Art’s. I’d been over there a million times, just me and Art, sitting on the balcony and listening to music and looking out over the river and the old hospital on the other bank. And sometimes Art would smoke, but I’d given up smoking a few years before when I started running a few days a week, so I never really smoked with him. But it was nice going to Art’s apartment and having a beer and listening to The Essential Duke Ellington or a Beach House album and sometimes some bossa nova. And a lot of times we’d set up his projector on the wall in the living room and watch something. Art really liked Wim Wenders movies. I didn’t know about him before, but I watched a couple of his movies and liked them.

But now it was Art and Judy’s. Or isis it Art’s and Judy’s? Judy’s and Art’s? In my mind it would always be Art’s.

#

The shopping list was written in Angie’s loose cursive. First on the list was cream cheese – 2 packages. She was making a cream cheese icing for the carrot cake. Next on the list was wine. I wasn’t good at picking out wine, but I guess you can’t really mess up as long as you don’t tell anybody how much you paid for it. Third on the list was butter, which I swore we had plenty of already. Then there were a handful of miscellaneous items.

The automatic doors slid open and I was greeted by a worker in a red vest. I grabbed a hand basket from a stack of them.

It was a big supermarket, with a high ceiling with metal rafters crisscrossing in every direction. The linoleum floor was a dull brown. The supermarket was well lit, and it was somehow completely odorless, save for the bakery and deli sections. You were supposed to go past the deli when you first entered, then pasts the produce section, then through the wine and beer, and then it was a free-for-all in the rest of the aisles. Somehow it was designed so that one naturally veered towards the produce upon entering. They wanted you to follow some natural path.

I went right past all of the neatly stacked peaches, the numerous apples, the not-yet-ripe bananas, the dew-covered heads of lettuce, the wrinkled avocados, the pre-cut watermelon slices wrapped in plastic, the sad bags of carrots, the shiny onions, the smooth red potatoes, the bright lemons and limes. I went right past all of it and went to the wine section. I referred to the shopping list. Wine, it said, nothing else. No note about red or white.

I took out my phone and sent a text to Angie. Red or white?

I stood in the middle of the wine section with the empty basket in my hand waiting for a reply. It took only five seconds before I saw that Angie was typing.

Whatever looks good, she said in one message. Another message followed: Do you know what Judy likes?

I didn’t know much about Judy, , and definitely didn’t know her wine preferences. I’d only met her on a few occasions and we hadn’t talked so much. All I knew is that she worked in a dentist’s office as a receptionist and that she was an interpretive dancer. When we’d talked, we’d only really talked about Art.

Not sure, I wrote back, and that was the end of the conversation.

Angie hadn’t met Judy yet. Tonight would be the first time. Angie didn’t have too many friends that were women, for one reason or another. I got the sense that she wanted to make a good impression, that she wanted things to go as smoothly as possible.

#

I picked out a $12 bottle of wine. It wasn’t from the bottom shelf, nor the top. It was a cabernet sauvignon, with a big gold coin on the label. Innocuous, not too flashy, but not obviously bad either. Not one of those gaudy labels. Angie wouldn’t know if it was good or bad, anyways. I wouldn’t, and neither would Art or Judy.

After the wine I went to the refrigerated dairy section. I opened a couple of the doors and picked out name-brand cream cheese and off-brand butter. I figured that Angie wanted something special for the carrot cake’s icing.

Next I wandered around the aisles for a bit. I went to the coffee aisle and spent a long time there looking at packages of coffee. There were colorful packages of coffee from Costa Rica and Colombia and Nicaragua. There were the big cylindrical tins that when you picked them up, you could hear the beans moving around inside. I picked up a lot of different types of coffee, examining them closely. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I wanted to buy some good coffee. I ended up picking up one of the tins and tossed it into the basket with the cream cheese, the sticks of butter, and the bottle of wine. The four items, together at the bottom of the basket, had a sense of completion about them.

On the way to the register I wandered through the freezer section, past the frozen pizzas and microwave meals and vegetables, and onto the ice cream section. I looked at all of the flavors and brands and had fond thoughts of eating them, of creamy textures and chocolate chunks. It would be nice to bring some ice cream, too, I thought. I took out a quart of strawberry ice cream and placed it carefully into the basket. It looked nice there. Strawberry ice cream would go well with the carrot cake.

As I entered a line at check-out I saw someone who looked a lot like Judy. The woman was just entering the store, pushing a shopping cart that was empty save for a brown leather purse. I got a better look at her. I was about three check-out lines away from her.

The woman didn’t just look like Judy, s; she was Judy. No doubt about it, it was Judy. She had these bangs that were separated in the middle, and she had a nose that protruded quite far from her face, but it wasn’t a bad nose in any way. It was distinguished and elegant. She was an attractive woman, I’d say. She had green eyes that showed a certain clarity in them.

As she pushed her cart into the store, she looked towards where I was standing, and we looked at each other for a split second. Then she faced forward again and kept walking. I stood there for a few moments, wondering about what had just happened, and then I realized I was expected to unload my groceries on the conveyor belt.

#

In the car I was pleased to see the fuel tank still marked full. I drove out of the parking lot and knew I had to head home. But before I went home I went to the gas station across the street again—the same Shell station—and I parked out front and went inside to buy a pack of Pall Malls.

“You want the greens?” the attendant asked.

“Greens are okay,” I said. On the counter was a display of multi-colored Bic’s. “I’ll take one of these too.” I paid and slipped the pack and the lighter into this secret pocket sewn into the interior of my jacket, right at the chest.

#

When I got home, I put the bag of groceries on the kitchen table then opened up and poured myself a beer into a glass.

Angie was there examining what I’d bought and gave me a strange look. “You’re having a beer now?”

I took a sip and gave a silent nod as I swallowed.

“Well you’re driving tonight so just have that one,” she instructed as she unwrapped the cream cheese. “I see you got ice cream. Did you want to bring that to Art and Judy’s?”

“I got that for me,” I said, suddenly deciding that I’d rather keep the ice cream at home, in our freezer. I was standing across from Angie at the kitchen island.

“Okay,” said Angie. “Ice cream for you, carrot cake for Art and Judy. That’ll be fine. That’ll be just fine.” Then she started humming some tune.

I moved to a chair in the living room. I drank my beer and Judy began with the icing, taking out a silver mixing bowl and a rubber spatula.

“The cake’s cooled long enough, so once the icing’s done I can spread it on right away,” Angie said from the kitchen.

I was still wearing my jacket. I wouldn’t change before going to Art’s, but I thought that Angie would probably put on something different. I felt with my right hand where there was the pack of Pall Malls. I could feel the tightness, I knew the box was still completely full, not a single missing cigarette, and that it was all wrapped up in a thin plastic sleeve. And there was the Bic, too. That was full, not used a single time. I liked knowing I had a full pack and lighter on me, right up against my chest.

“So the store was okay,” Angie said. Before I could confirm it she said, “Thanks for going, really. I know you don’t like errands so much.” She looked up from the mixing bowl where she was making the icing and smiled at me.

“No problem,” I said.

“Does your chest hurt or something?”

I realized I still had my hand over where the Pall Mall’s were. I lowered my arm and put my hand on my lap. “No, it’s okay.”

“Okay,” Angie said, a bit suspicious.

Angie finished with the icing in the time it took me to drink my one beer. I stood and watched her ice it. She spread the icing over the top with the rubber spatula. It was white and fluffy and went on thick. I stuck my finger in the mixing bowl and tasted it. It was sweet and creamy.

“All right,” she said, returning the spatula to the empty mixing bowl. “I just need ten minutes to get ready, then we can leave.”

Angie was ready ten minutes later. We went out of the house, Angie carrying her carrot cake as if it were a baby, me carrying the bottle of wine like a walking stick. We got in the Malibu, and I turned the keys and the car turned on. I looked at the gas gauge again and saw it was full. Music started playing. It was some bossa nova.

“You got gas right?” Angie said as we pulled out of the driveway. She was looking out the window.

“Yep,” I said.

I looked in the rearview mirror, then back ahead. After one beer I was feeling good but probably when I got to Art’s I would suggest opening the wine right away. But I wouldn’t drink so much that I couldn’t drive home, no way. Just enough to feel good and talk to Art.

The drive wasn’t more than ten minutes, and most of that time was waiting at red lights that went down boulevards. We stopped at a red light.

“Oh,” I said, bringing my hands together at the bottom of the steering wheel. “I forgot to tell you. I saw Judy at Safeway.”

Angie looked away from the window and towards me. “That’s funny. Did you tell her you were getting things for the carrot cake?”

“No.”

The light turned green, and the car ahead of me hesitated to start moving. Finally it did.

“So you just said hi, then?”

“I didn’t say anything to her,” I said. “She was walking in while I was at the check-out.”

“But you waved, or smiled at her, or something,” Angie said.

I thought about it. “No, I didn’t wave or do anything.”

“So she didn’t see you.”

“No, she saw me. She saw me and I saw her.” I checked my side view and rearview mirrors and switched into the left lane. “We saw each other but didn’t do anything.”

Angie didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She fidgeted in her seat, and the aluminum foil covering the carrot cake crinkled. “Maybe she didn’t recognize you.”

“She recognized me all right.” I passed a car and returned to the right lane. We were almost there. “Even though she was a little ways away I could see that she recognized me.”

Angie inhaled slowly, then let out all the air in one breath. “I don’t get it, Neil. You see Judy at Safeway an hour before you’re going over to her apartment and you don’t say hi. And you didn’t even wave.” Angie took her phone out of her pocket and typed out a message, her thumbs darting around on the screen, then she put her phone away again. “And she didn’t do anything either. I’m about to meet this girl and this is practically all I know about her. That you two saw each other an hour ago and didn’t say hi. Now I’m gonna be sitting there thinking about that the whole time.”

I turned right onto Art’s street. There were cars parked on both the right and left side and most of the buildings were standard four-story apartment buildings made of brick or concrete. Art’s building, the tallest on the block, was at the far end of the street, where it ended in a cul-de-sac by the river. It was called Sunset Gardens, but it didn’t really exude any peaceful sentiments of sunset nor gardens. But it was right by the river, which was nice enough.

I found a place out front and turned off the engine. The music stopped and we sat in silence.

“If you want I could say something when we get inside,” I said. “I could tell Judy that I think I saw her at Safeway but wasn’t sure if it was her or not so I didn’t wave or say hi.”

Angie closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, no. You’d better just not mention it. Unless she says anything. Just don’t say anything about it. Forget it ever happened.” Angie put her hand on the door handle and started to pull it. It popped and the door opened about an inch. “Now I’m nervous.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. We’ll open the wine first thing.”

“Why did you tell me that on the way here, anyways?” she asked. She was really on edge. “Whatever. Just don’t say anything.”

She opened the car door the rest of the way and got out, holding the cake parallel to the ground the whole time. I got out on my side with the bottle of wine.

At the entrance I pushed the button for 4E and Art’s voice came through the speaker.

“Neil?” his voice crackled.

“Neil and Angie,” I said.

“Hi Art,” Angie said, leaning towards the microphone.

“Come on in guys,” said his voice, then it cut. Then came a buzz and I opened the door.

#

At the door Judy let us in. She just sort of opened the door, said hi, and motioned us in. Angie came in behind me with the cake.

“Hello,” Judy said to me, and we kissed on the cheek.

“Hi Judy,” I said.

“I’m Angie,” Angie said, keeping the cake balanced in her left arm while she shook hands with Judy. “So nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” said Judy, and she smiled so much that her eyes turned to slits. Judy was on the tall side. She was a thin thing, but not fragile looking. At Safeway I hadn’t noticed how thin she was, but up close it was clear to me. She was in a purple sweater with sleeves that ended halfway down her forearms, and her hair was tied back. I’d forgotten what she’d been wearing before, but I was sure that she had changed when she got home.

Art appeared from the bedroom. He was a big guy, his paunch snugly contained by the closed buttons of a brown cardigan. Over the past couple years he’d gotten bigger, although he had always been a big guy. He wasn’t a clumsy sort, though. When he walked it was like he was floating everywhere. For some months he’d been growing his hair out all over. He had quite a mustache and a beard. And his hair curled down around his ears.

“Art,” I said to him. “What’s up?”

“I see you brought wine,” he said, lifting his eyebrows. “And cake. Did you make it, Angie?”

“I did, I did,” Angie said, smiling and nodding. She put the cake down on the kitchen counter. “Neil’s dad’s recipe, actually. It’s carrot cake.”

“All right,” he said with a smile.

“Are we hungry?” Judy asked. She patted her hands on her thighs. “I made chicken pot pie and mashed potatoes. And green beans. You aren’t vegetarian, are you Angie?”

Angie shook her head.

“Well good,” Judy said. “I’ll just set the table.”

“I’ll open the wine,” I said.

“I’ll get you an opener,” said Art.

“I’ll get glasses,” said Angie.

We all had our tasks.

#

When we sat down with our wine, Art and I started talking about his work. He was at the community college teaching environmental science courses. Meanwhile Angie and Judy got to know each other. I heard them talking about where they’d grown up. They found out that they both had family living in the same suburb of Chicago. They pulled out their phones and showed each other photos. They started following each other on Instagram, even.

Judy started telling a story about when she’d seen Paul Simon in concert, how she’d got a free ticket to the show, and Angie and Art were just looking at her listening and smiling and nodding at all the appropriate times.

“We got there early enough to get a spot in the front row, maybe two hours early. There were a bunch of people waiting there already, most of them old folks that had brought their own folding chairs. But there was some guy in a banana suit,” she was saying.

I was looking at her and sipping my wine. Then I looked at Angie, who had both her hands laid over each other at the base of her wine glass. Then I looked at Art. He had one arm around the back of her chair and had his glass of wine in the other hand. He was looking at Judy with a smile, with great fascination.

“So we asked him—I was there with my sister and her boyfriend—what was with the banana suit. Who wears a banana suit to see Paul Simon?”

The way she was moving her hands and cocking her head forward made me wonder about all of the times she’d told the story before. At least ten times, I guessed. Probably twenty times, each time more theatrical than the last.

“He said he’d been following him all around the country since the beginning of his tour, wearing the same suit each time,” Judy said. “It was August when we saw him, and the tour started in May.”

“Who has that kind of time and money?” Angie scoffed.

“I know, right?” Judy said. “Someone without a job and a lot of money. Look, I’ve actually got a few pictures with him.” She took out her phone and started scrolling with her thumb.

“So what did the guy want?” I asked Judy.

Judy kept looking at her phone, and frowned. “What did he want?”

“Why was he wearing the suit, I mean.”

She didn’t look up at me and continued scrolling. “To be recognized. For Paul Simon to see him,” she said, as though it were the obvious reason.

“He told you that? Did he tell you that?” I asked.

“Well, no,” she said.

Angie slapped her knuckles against my leg underneath the table. “Let her tell the story,” she said.

Judy found the picture and showed it, but she didn’t tilt the screen towards me so I didn’t get a good look. “Here he is,” she said. “We took this once we got inside the venue. And the concert was amazing, really amazing.” Judy held her phone over the table and she and Angie went flipping through photos and videos.

“I bet,” Angie said. “Paul Simon. So cool.”

Judy played a video of him playing ‘Cecilia.’ The crowd was singing along and the audio was grainy and buzzing.

“Did he play ‘Scarborough Fair’?” I asked.

Judy and Angie were absorbed in the video and didn’t respond. Art was leaning over and looking at the screen even though he couldn’t have been getting a good look at it. I tried to lean over and see it, just because everyone else was, and I swear Judy tilted the screen away from me.

#

We started eating. We ate a salad with slices of strawberry and walnuts. Angie said it was delicious, and I agreed. After the salad Judy cut the pot pie open, and steam rose out from inside. She served us all big pieces and we all helped ourselves to mashed potatoes and green beans. We finished our first glass of wine, then we drank another.

“Neil, don’t forget you’re driving,” Angie said to me.

I went on talking to Art. He was asking me about how many years I thought we had left on the Earth, and how long it would take for us to colonize Mars.

After the second glass of wine I asked Art if we could open a second bottle, and Art got up and opened one. Angie and Judy glanced at me sideways. Judy seemed offended that I’d asked. When Art opened the bottle I was the only one to pour myself more.

“Anyone else want another glass?” I asked, offering to pour.

Judy and Angie paused their conversation and shook their heads.

We ate and ate until the pie was gone. There was a bit of mashed potatoes left, and about half the green beans.

“Now I’m full and sleepy,” Art said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve got enough room for cake, though.”

“Oh yes,” Judy said with a smile, rubbing her hands together. “I’ll clear the table if someone gets the cake and plates.”

“Neil,” Angie said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Someone’s got to get the cake and the plates.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

I got up and went to the kitchen. It was just off to the side of the dining room, without any doorway separating it. “Do we need forks? Who wants a new fork?” I said from the kitchen.

Judy walked towards me with the empty pie pan and mashed potatoes. “I think we can do with the ones we used,” she said in a sort of whisper.

I didn’t say anything. I just went to the cabinet for the plates.

“But you can get plates from that cabinet there,” Judy said as she put the dishes down on the counter, gesturing towards the cabinet I was already reaching towards.

“Okay,” I said. I wanted to say that I knew where the plates were, that I probably had a better idea about where everything was in the apartment, that I’d probably spent more time in Art’s place than she had. I wanted to tell her, “Don’t worry, I know Art’s place,” but I just took the plates out. I brought the cake and the plates to the table. Judy followed me out of the kitchen.

“My dad’s carrot cake,” I said as I set it down. “Made by Angie.”

“Looks great,” said Art.

“Hope it tastes great,” Angie said.

I started cutting pieces and serving them. I gave one to Art, then one to Angie, then one on Judy’s plate.

“Oh that’s too big,” she said. “I only need half of that.”

I put aside the piece I’d cut for me and cut her a smaller one.

“Much better,” she said.

I poured myself another glass of wine, and this time Art had one with me. Then we began with the cake. We ate the cake slowly. Everyone was vocal about how good it was.

“What recipe did you use for this?” Judy asked Angie. “It’s amazing, really.”

I found it odd that Judy didn’t seem to want to acknowledge me. I had said it was my dad’s recipe twice now, and for some reason Judy had refused to hear it.

“It was my dad’s recipe,” I said, loud enough to cause Angie to look over at me. I took a bite. “Neil Sr.’s carrot cake. His name was Neil, too. It’s the only recipe my mom’s kept in the drawer in her kitchen. Nothing else.”

“Well you’ve got to give it to me,” Judy said to Angie. “I think I’m gonna have another piece.”

I watched her cut another piece. Delicately. She cut herself more than I was going to cut for her originally. I realized in that moment that I really hated the woman, more than anyone I’d ever hated in my life. Probably I’d never truly hated anyone before that moment. I felt myself fill up with anger. I wanted badly to tell her that she couldn’t have another piece, that she couldn’t have the recipe. But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut and tapped my fork on my plate. The cake tasted sour to me.

“Did I see you at Safeway?”

The question just slipped out of my mouth. I looked at Judy and leaned forward. I watched her face flush with color. She stopped chewing for a second and then said, “At Safeway?”

I didn’t look away from Judy, but I could tell Angie didn’t know what to do. She was quiet and had stopped eating.

“Maybe two hours before we came,” I said. “I think I saw you come in while I was in the check-out line.”

“Judy did go to Safeway,” Art said.

“So it was you,” I said. “I thought I saw you there.”

“Oh really?” Judy said. “You should have said hi.”

“I was already in line for the check-out. Did you see me?”

“If I saw you, I would’ve said hi.”

“I thought you saw me. It seemed like you looked right at me,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Judy said with a slight frown. She looked back down at her piece of cake and moved it around in short little movements with her fork.

“I’m sure you were looking right at me,” I said. “I can’t think of a reason why you’d deny it.”

“Neil! If she says she didn’t see you, she didn’t see you,” said Angie. “Just drop it.”

I looked across the table at poor old Art. He was just looking down at the table quietly. I had finished my cake, so I got up and brought my plate to the kitchen. I got my jacket and made for the door.

“Where are you going?” Angie asked. I opened the door. “Neil!”

I left. I didn’t bother waiting for the elevator and took the stairs down. I went down the first flight, counter-clockwise, down to the fifth floor, then down to the fourth, third, second, and finally first. I left the building.

It was dark out already, almost nine o’clock. I went left down the street, towards where it ended at the river, with the hospital on the other shore. I reached the river and stood looking at the dark water flowing all at once. I thought about how there was almost an entire cake made from my dad’s recipe up in Art’s place. Then I remembered that I’d bought cigarettes earlier. I carefully opened the plastic, took one out, put it between my lips, and lit it.

This could be one of those small things to change my life. The best thing for me to do was to go back and apologize and clear things up. A small, little thing. If I did enough of them, I would be happy. Or at least a bit closer to it. Like subtly diverting the flow of a river. I really felt that. I could build my life up bit by bit. It seemed simple to me, actually.

The first small thing would be to put out my cigarette and throw out the rest of the pack. Then I could tell Judy I’m sorry and apologize to everyone for drinking too much. For ruining a perfectly pleasant night. Art was my friend, Angie was my partner. I wanted to keep them around.

I knew I had to go back to Art’s place eventually. But I stayed there smoking a while, listening to the wind blow between leafless trees. I still had some time for myself.

Winter’s Savings

1.

In my studio I stare at the painting
you nailed on my wall a month ago–
a girl sitting on a rooftop
watching the marketplace,
a string of paper lanterns 
keep their light, not a flicker,
suspended over the quick tongues
of bargainers and rapid exchanges,
as the soothsayer captures
a purchase. 

I remember the ease
and rush of hustling–
a camaraderie between the sweets stand
and savory meats,
then a passerby and me,
locked in, suddenly quiet
on the crowded street,
negotiating the price
of a love poem.

Sometimes I’d slip into absence,
and only wake when requested
to write into a stranger’s pain
on my typewriter.

That is where I left my stand when the world changed.

2.

You looked a little anxious 
when I unwrapped the painting.
I was surprised, and you said, 
“because I thought of you busking.” 

I look at it often.
I would have you in this room
staring on our backs 
at the ceiling fan
where you pointed out one day
a barely perceptible note
you placed on a wing
in green ink.

I have been lonely,
meditating daily,
trying not to think– 

you have been away,
submerged in water,
sorting your mind. 

I am torn,
but I tend to sun salutations
and occasionally the dishes. 

I speak softly,
sweep the floor,
and shake out the sheepskin. 

You may find me here,
even if it’s sad news, 
and you choose another.

If you must hide your eyes,
I’ll shine mine still.

Or if you decide to find out 
what it’s like to rest with me
on this simple bed
where we caressed
now and then 
and kept ourselves awake
until morning birds
tapped your curly head
before they flew away–

I would let you say
whatever’s on your mind.                

You may be a river
that runs through my shore,
that slips over the rocks,
that aches and recollects its passage.

I lean into my savings,
nights held by your last touch–                                   
and hope you bring–
below your brows, your lashes–
an unabashed look.

When I answered the phone and heard Jerry’s high, whiny voice on the other line, I knew he needed a favor, and I knew I’d say yes. 

He called on a Tuesday, too hot for May, the Jacaranda tree in the yard not swaying a bit. Air as still as a statue, Linda would say. This was around the time Linda started calling me a bone loafer and telling me No one retires at fifty-eight, even though she was down to only two days a week taking blood at county health. 

I wasn’t really surprised to hear Jerry’s voice, but I was glad Linda was out, that I was the one to answer. Jerry didn’t sound drunk, for what it’s worth, and he was, as Linda would say, up a creek.   

“Jerry. How are you? You ok?” 

I was sitting in my big faux leather armchair by the window, watching finches skip from the dirt yard up to the feeder and back down again. A mound of seed had formed below that reminded me of an ancient ruin or a burial mound. 

“Yeah well, not too good man,” Jerry said. “Mom died.”  

I held the receiver away from my face for a few seconds. “Well, shit, Jerry, I’m sorry to hear that.” I tried to picture his mother, but could only see him, his bald head haloed by thin yellow hair, the back stretched into a straggly ponytail. Face as white as the skull beneath. Permanent red racoon eyes.  

“Yeah, thanks,” said Jerry. “Lung cancer. No surprise there.” I heard him flip the wheel of a lighter and the fuzz of a cigarette. I couldn’t tell if he was making a joke. 

“So here’s the thing.” Jerry paused, drawing off his cigarette. “…and I know this is a longshot, but I’ve got no one else to call.”  

I could hear him winding up, looking for the right words. He hadn’t called to ask for money or for a place to stay in years, not since the last time when Linda got on the other line and called him a mooch and a junkie bum and told him she’d get the cops involved if he kept calling. She wasn’t the most delicate in these matters, which I didn’t usually mind so much. She was mostly just looking out for me, and maybe only a little bit for my unemployment checks. Either way, she screamed until there was no one left on the other end to scream at. I hadn’t heard much from Jerry since then. It was hard to understand how things could change so much between two people, I thought, as Jerry worked up to asking his favor. 

“What is it, Jerry?” I let down the leg rest of my armchair. 

“Well see, mom’s service is next week in Denver. I need to get out there to help out with her house and the arrangements and that sort of thing.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, it’s good of you to step up.”  

“Here’s the thing though. I can’t drive right now. You know…” He left me to fill in the rest. I pictured the mugshots. I pictured him staggering into court in a cheap suit. I pictured his old Lincoln Town Car parked on my front lawn a few years ago, two wheels busted through Linda’s cement flower box. 

“So I’m wondering if you’d drive me out.” 

“To Colorado?”  

“We can make it in a day, I think. Only about fifteen hours to Denver.” He paused for a minute on the other line. “I’m a little short right now, but I can give you some money for the trouble once mom's stuff is sorted. I have a little bit coming my way.”  

A map unfolded in my mind, and I traced the thin red line from my house in Riverside up through the desert. This was a bigger ask than I’d anticipated, but like I said, my mind was made up when I’d put the phone to my ear. I was unemployed for the foreseeable, and I couldn’t sit around the house and fight with Linda anymore. I’d been feeling dry for months, busted, like an old lawn chair left out in the yard. “If something doesn’t change there’s no way I’ll stay straight,” I had said in my meeting earlier that week, staring into a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee in a church basement. “I just don’t see the point.” Then Jerry called. In my mind, I was already packing a bag.

We left on Thursday. It was barely light out when I pulled up outside Jerry’s apartment complex. He looked mostly the same as the last time I’d seen him—skinny, bad beard, that straggly, hold-out ponytail. He seemed a little shorter maybe, his back bowed out in the shape of a satellite dish. He wore a black AC/DC t-shirt and cargo shorts. He was gaunt and gangly, his skin the color of gingerbread, and yet he somehow still looked younger than he was, younger than the rest of us, with sturdy roofer’s arms and a tan that didn’t look fake or leathery, not like mine or Linda’s. A single black duffel bag sat near his feet. The flap was open, and I could see his clothes poking out, black t-shirts and gym shorts and mismatched socks. His long yellow fingers waved at me as I pulled up.   

Jerry and I had learned a long time ago how to get along by going along, as Linda would say. This mostly meant not talking about the old days or, more recently, not talking much at all. As he climbed in the passenger seat, I slapped his back like the old friends we were.  

“Sorry for your loss man.”  

“You're a lifesaver,” he said. “I owe you,” and then, “Linda ok with this?” 

“Linda and I aren’t seeing eye to eye on much these days.” I adjusted my mirror to have something to do with my hands. “It’s all good though. Everyone fights right?” The truth was, Linda and I didn’t fight as much as we slumped. Some days I felt alive and well with Linda, but just as often I felt so stagnant, I could crawl right up out of my skin. For her, the peak of contentment was a steady keel and calm waters, and my old life was an ever-encroaching squall. I didn’t see things quite that way though, as much as I was glad to have made it out alive. I was never good at hiding my feelings, not good at sitting still either. So when the Jerry’s of the world came calling, hell hounds reaching back from a faster, rowdier life, I answered the calls more often than not. 

“Do you smoke in here?” said Jerry, reaching back to dig through his duffle. 

“Tobacco’s fine.” I tried not to place any particular emphasis. Jerry had, for a while, been practicing what he called California sober, but from the little I heard about the situation, it seemed like the pot usually led him down the same little circuit he’d been running for years. I wasn’t here to judge, as long as he left me out of it.  

“Got it,” he said. He lit a cigarette and rolled down his window. I pulled out of the apartment complex and put on my blinker, squinted, and leaned east.  

We managed some small talk in the morning hours of our drive. Where we’d been and what we’d been working at. Plans. Schemes. Jerry was vague about details, talking mostly about a couple friends named Tim and Richie and some jobs down south. I talked about fitting pipes and about being out of work. My bum knee and the day I had it out with my neighbors about their little shit dog. Around noon Jerry fell asleep, his bald head frying like an egg against the window. 

Past Joshua Tree, I pulled into a truck stop to piss. Jerry rocked awake as the car rumbled into the dirt parking lot. The bathrooms were in a brick out-building in the back and took quarters. I pissed and tried not to touch too much, then sat on the bumper and waited for Jerry.  

When he’d been in the bathroom long enough for me to start to worry, I started running scenarios in my head. First, beat on the door and hope he finished his lengthy shit and come out with no problems at all. Next, fetch the pimply gas station attendant and ask him to unlock the door. After that the scenarios got darker and harder for me to formulate in my mind. I thought back to a particularly wretched bathroom in East Hollywood from the old days, Jerry curled up in a pool of his own vomit on the tile floor.  

Finally, Jerry emerged from the bathroom looking bug-eyed and squirrelly. I tried my best not to be suspicious. The most useless pain, Linda always said about suspicion. I was never really sure where she got that one from. But as Jerry walked up to the car he seemed to be swaying in his shoes. He smelled like weed. He looked like weed.  

“Jerry, you still with me? I thought you’d drowned in there.”  

He smiled and steadied himself, put one hand out and leaned on the hood of the car. “This heat, man. That bathroom isn’t helping anyone out either, is it?” 

“Well, that’s right I guess.” I looked back at the quarter shack behind us.  

“How are you feeling? Want to let me take over for a while?” he asked, a little sheepishly.  

“I don’t know, Jerry. That’s why I’m here isn’t it? To drive? Plus, you look a little worse for wear right now.” Linda would have said he looked higher than groceries.  

Jerry made a frown that might have touched the dirt. “Okay, Steve, I’ll level. I smoked a little bit in there to set me up. But just pot. I’m feeling alright though.” He said “alright” with a Southern drawl, an accent that wasn’t his. “You know the program.”

I squinted past him into the desert sun. A car pulled out of the parking lot, and an eerie silence settled around us. 

Jerry scratched the back of his neck and kicked at a spot in the dirt in front him. “I get it, man I do. It’s just… do you ever feel like you're not doing anything?” 

“I don’t really mind being unemployed actually.”  

“No, that’s not what I mean.” 

Jerry sat down in the dirt and leaned against the bumper. His t-shirt was wrinkled, and a wreath of sweat had formed at the collar. “I mean life just moving on around you.” 

I was getting impatient.  “You’re stoned.”

“I was supposed to be home last month for my cousin’s funeral. You remember Little Matt?” 

I nodded, though I did not remember Little Matt.  

“Couldn’t make it back. Mom was pretty upset when I talked to her. That was one of the last times we spoke.” He got up and dusted himself off. “It’s just all this dying, man. And here I am, just riding along. Not even making the turns. Not even at the wheel.”  

Jerry’s face looked like it might slide off his skull. A sunburnt map. A legend for suffering.  A big rig pulled into the parking lot, sending up few fussy cactus wrens. I looked at the long stretch of road in front of us and the long stretch behind. Not a car in sight. Not even a mile marker.  

“Fuck. Alright,” I said. “Keep it at seventy.” I tossed Jerry the keys. 

I felt a little jolt of energy as we left the rest stop. The sun was still high, and Jerry looked confident behind the wheel, his hands at ten and two like they’d taught us in high school. He was smiling big, and he kept saying, “You’re the real deal, Steve” and “No one knows me like you,” which felt cheesy but was probably also a little true. I felt like I’d given him something real. I felt a little like I’d hit off the pipe with him back at the rest stop.   

We drove for another hour or so, and I was beginning to nod off in the passenger seat when 

I saw lights burning red and blue on the road ahead of us, fires kindled atop half a dozen highway patrol cars. As we pulled closer the sun bounced back off the doors of two staties parked at angles across the highway. 

He was drifting to the side of the road.  “Listen,” he said, putting the car in park on the shoulder, “I don’t want you to get overheated here, but I haven’t been totally above board”

“Jerry, you can’t turn stop right now.”  

“Damnit, Jerry.” I rubbed my eyes. 

We were only about fifty yards from the police lights. The car idled. The heat sent waxy halos up around us. 

“You gotta pull up. We can't just sit here. It’s even more sketchy to turn around and hit bricks the other way now.” I waited for him to do something, anything. His eyes were so huge and glassy you could have cannonballed into them.  

“Fuck.” Jerry slapped the steering wheel. He rubbed his brow and then, slowly, put the car back into drive and slunk toward the police blockade. An officer stepped out in front of the patrol cars as we slowed to a stop. He bent down to lean in Jerry’s open window. He wore a flat brimmed hat which knocked at the door frame. I could smell his coffee breath from the passenger seat. 

The officer leaned down to fix me in his gaze, then looked in the back seat.   

“Yes sir,” said Jerry, but in a distracted way, as if he were just tossing the words out for anyone to catch. He did not look at the officer but instead looked past the parked police cars to the wreckage on the highway. I looked too. I couldn’t not look.     

“You remember when you left me outside The Viper Room that one night? To go pick up some dope?” He asked the question as if he were describing a movie, as if neither of us had been there that night but had just seen it all go down.  

I felt a stab of guilt. “Lots of mistakes back then.”

“Or there was that time when you left me on the hook at that motel in Phoenix? You and the girls were just gone when I woke up.”

I didn’t remember it that way, but as Jerry described it, I knew his version was likely just as true as mine.  

“What are you getting at Jerry?”

 “Well, that was probably when I knew that you and I were in it for the long haul.” We hit a long, straight stretch of highway and Jerry accelerated. 

“What do you mean?”  

“Just that we are both always looking for something, and that neither of us would ever be able to find it. Like you're here with me now. And like your situation with Linda. I get it, is all.”  

“You don’t know anything about my situation with Linda.”

I let this hang in the air. I pictured Linda sitting at the kitchen table painting her nails, and suddenly I missed her, missed her more than I’d maybe missed anyone ever in my life. Maybe she would be happy to see me when I got home, even though I’d been a fuck lately. Even though I’d left her again. 

 “My mom always liked you,” said Jerry. “She’d appreciate this.”  

“Your mom didn’t really ever know me,” I said. I fiddled with the latch to the glove box. I was still heated at him for putting me in this position, and he was still trying to pull me up out of my anger. “I only really met her the one time.”   

“No, you’re right,” said Jerry. “But still.” He turned on the radio low, barely audible behind the wind and the road noise. Dusk had fallen around us, turning the landscape even more Martian, the red cake horizon burning. A brush of plum behind that. We passed massive desert rocks, chimneys and spindles and sharp spires.  

Jerry took the cash, but when I came back a few minutes later he was nowhere to be found, and the pump still read zeros, not an ounce added. 

Inside, the gas station was empty except for a gray-haired woman behind the glass. She pointed past the junk food and American flag t-shirts to a line of one-eyed jacks on the back wall, their screens screaming technicolor. Jerry’s shoulders tensed when he heard me approach.

“Jerry what the fuck!?”

“Oh good,” he said casually, as if he’d been waiting for me. “My good luck charm.” 

“Are you seriously back here dumping our gas money into a slot machine?. 

Jerry laughed but didn’t look up. He pulled the arm and sent the wheel spinning. “Take it easy. I’m about to get hot.”

“Jerry, are you crazy man?” 

The wheel settled and the machine buzzed. “I’m trying to make you some money here. Why are you acting like I’m the bad guy?”

“You are the bad guy Jerry! Damnit. I should have known this trip would be a fiasco.”

“You know what, you are right.” Jerry finally turned and looked up at me. “It was a bad idea calling you. Always a bad idea calling you.” 

“No, my bad,” I said. “Fool me once.”

Jerry pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes were watering, and he looked suddenly like a younger version of himself, my old friend Jerry who played bass guitar and hated onions. “Listen Steve, you are kidding yourself with this strait-laced routine. You act like you are doing me some favor by coming out here, but you were jumping at the chance to get out of your shitty little life.” He shook his head. “You won’t admit this either, but that’s how it’s always been. Before Linda and even before Andrea. You’ve always acted like you had it figured, and I didn’t, like we weren’t on the same level. But It’s like I said in the car, we’re the same.” 

“Are you serious? I’ve been fixing your messes for thirty years!” I nearly screamed it at him. The old woman at the register was staring. “I’m done bailing you out.” 

“Yeah, well I’m done giving you something to live for.” He turned back to his game. 

“This ain’t living, Jerry.”

“Well go ahead then,” he said with his back to me. “You know how to leave people.” 

I was still standing next to the car, deciding what to do next, when Jerry came out after me. He shrugged and pushed a wad of cash towards me. “I doubled it for you. I gave the crone forty bucks too. Will that fill the tank?”

“I don’t want your money,” I said. I was still shaking.  

He waved the money again. “Come on man, take it. For the trouble. She said there’s a bus station somewhere. So, you can go on and head back.”

“I don’t want it,” I said again, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the wad of cash in his hand. The money glowed in the gas station neons, a sparkling payload.  I thought about going back to my life with Linda. The neighbor’s dog. Weekly AA meetings in the church basement. 

“Doubled it, huh?” I said.

He smiled, and a string of memories passed through my mind like photos in a carousel, a dozen times when Jerry had bailed me out or when I’d fucked Jerry over, and all the times we’d run at the same pace or fallen through the same dark holes. I looked from the cash back up to Jerry, and there it was. He was right, at least in part, I’d just been working my whole life to not admit it.

He fanned out the bills and waved them. “I’m not unlucky all the time. Just in matters of love. And when the bottle’s involved obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said.

Over Jerry’s shoulder I could see the old woman still slumped over inside the gash station’s sickly yellow light.  

“So what happens next?” he folded the bills and tucked them into my shirt pocket. 

I looked at Jerry’s flushed cheeks, the star below his eye I knew was from a particular night we’d spent in West Hollywood. “I guess you take us the rest of the way to Colorado,” I said, and handed over the keys.

It was dark when we hit the Colorado border, Jerry behind the wheel the whole way. He pulled into a rest stop outside Loma and turned off the car. We had not spoken for several hours, and we sat there in the rest stop parking lot in silence, both of us staring off into the low line of night. The windows were down, and the high desert air had turned cool. The engine hummed and clicked beneath us like a chased animal trying to catch its breath.  

Jerry opened his door and got out of the car. He stretched and walked past the parking lot into a dirt field beside the road. Miles of desert stretched before him, and beyond that a white row of subdivision lifted like tiny teeth. The sky had turned the color of a dark bruise, mauve tinged in gold. Jerry put his hands on his hips and dipped his head. In the low light, from my vantage in the passenger seat, he looked like a cactus or a desert cedar, bent over and gnarled by time, but studded too with tiny, luminous flowers.   

It was a one-way trip for Jerry in the end. He moved into his mom’s old house in south Denver, and I drove back to California alone, the desert even more alien and lonely than it had been on the way there. I never heard what happened with his parole. No news is probably good news on that front.

“Pretty peaceful ride all in all,” I told Linda when I got home. She didn’t believe me, and I didn’t apologize directly for leaving, but she forgave me enough not to ask any other questions. 

I went back to work that fall and tried to listen to Linda more, even when she wasn’t talking, and we started walking more in the evenings and she kept on tending her succulents and we kept on tending our little slice of earth. Jerry called occasionally, and we talked about the old days with a bit of new varnish added, the way a new ending to a story can change all that came before.

Jerry died young like I always knew he would, though it was from your average heart troubles and nothing too unsavory. He spent his last few years near family and, by all accounts, pretty clean and pretty happy. 

A cousin named Keeno found my name in Jerry’s wispy little address book and called to let me know about the funeral. He sounded a bit desperate on the phone, like he was having trouble rounding up enough mourners. “I know it’s a long drive,” he said, “but I bet he’d like it if you walked with the urn.” I thought about making the trip again, this time without Jerry riding shotgun. I thought too about what kind of audience I might draw at my own funeral.

When I hung up with Keeno I sat at the kitchen table for a long time, just staring at my hands, picturing Jerry pulling over the car and walking out into the dusky desert those years before. I was still studying my hands when Linda walked into the kitchen. 

“You ever think about cremation?” I said. About the afterlife?”

“What, are you drinking again?” She put a kettle on the range. The burner clicked and whooshed. “Do I need to get you to a meeting?”

“There’s these trees,” I said, “trees that you can get for when you die…” I tried to explain to her what Jerry had explained to me about the trees and the roots and living on forever, the endless movement of molecules.

“Who would want to live forever?” said Linda. She pulled two mugs from the cupboard.

“I heard too you can get one tree, for two people.” 

I said it quiet, a little embarrassed maybe. The kettle was just starting to rattle. “You can share roots, I mean.” 

Linda didn’t turn from the stove, but I could see her shoulders lift slightly, which meant she was smiling. I’ll thank Jerry forever for that, for helping me make Linda smile on a random Tuesday afternoon as his cells were being torched and shoveled into a pile, soon to be folded into the Rocky Mountain dirt.

Monday morning on the way to work I drop her off at Columbine and take Santa Fe downtown. I prefer the gritty underbelly of Denver to the sun-squint of Sixth Avenue east. To my right, the Englewood library and its out-of-place Egyptian obelisk, the Breakfast King shuttered and for sale, a semitrailer in a dirt lot selling Hatch green chile and, of course, the railyard. I have always loved trains, juggernauts crisscrossing past factories where slouching men drawl their miseries. A brawny orange Santa Fe diesel strains to heft a long line of hopper cars overtopped with coal. I slide the window down so I can hear the thumping surge of iron and steel, the rhythmic clacking of the rails, and see the groaning metal chain barreling forward while also reaching back: a past echoing with shrieking whistles. Some of the cars display graffiti murals—bubble letters like sad clowns peering through shrouds of grime. The coal cars slide by, irrevocably dull except for the speeding wheels which, polished by tons of friction, flash like lightning from the rails.  

happening in a small room, in the back
of an empty building, at the center of Denver,
leaving a sloppy recognition on my face

standing in a room at night with my other self,
a spatial moment of recollection and reflection

astride in my walk leading me to a large city,
forgetting a star dream of mothers
who search longingly for their desperate sons

turning my head weeping, covering my eyes
from all past midnight skies and colors carving out mesas
remembering days of stolen celestial memories,
and persistent confessions

lost among conversation, and the smell
of nicotine on the fingers, falling into a differential
phase of lunar refraction, a plate glass scattering
about the floor, an irretrievable feeling of mist still
lingering as fragments and sickness

raining a few days ago, and leaving the streets,
an exuding marauds of displaced recluse stars
rendering a meld of structure into an ocular madness
and compromises the wills of prevailing sinners
attempting to coexist in a space as two bodies

after leaving this gathering of bodies and exiting
the building, forgetting about flailing my desires
walking the streets of this glistening city
discovering myself staring at another ceiling
of luminescent stars trailing back to me

a concealing constellation where I await the discovery
of another bed not meant for sleeping but for traveling
                                                                             – alone

seemingly shell shocked not for the sake of war
but for the chance of meeting anyone in a meaningless
face where everyone is standing ever closer,
as cigarette smoke in the night sky

Ulysses is Alright with Me

A new friend from the bus named Ulysses
always tries to remember to not be angry
at people for the terribleness in this world.

I consider this as I work to untangle 
whose views and actions feel dangerous for me 
and the people I love. 

Ulysses and I are chatting about this and other things
when our bus pulls up in front of St. Francis. 
The bus ramp deploys and we move out of the way

for a man in a wheelchair who is having trouble
aligning his wheels with the ramp. 
He has puked all over himself

and the bus driver looks the other way, out the left window,
pretends not to notice the trail of vomit.

I am bewildered and Ulysses is calm. We go together 
to right the man’s wheels,
ask if he’s okay. 

The man waves us off, disembarks,
rushes towards St. Francis 
without engaging the crosswalk light,
almost gets hit by a car.

The bus ramp lifts, folds over a smear of vomit, and eight of us board. 

I see the vomit trail from where we stand 
to the space where the man was parked.
I escape to the back of the bus,
and I glower at the bus driver 
who still looks through the left window,
waiting for everyone to finish boarding. 
He does not see me. He does not see anyone.

Ulysses sees the vomit the rest of us are avoiding, 
pulls out a pair of nitrile gloves, asks the bus driver to hold on a minute,
and then proceeds to clean up the mess with the rough paper towels at the front. 

He grabs a trash bag, and lets the bus driver know he’s dumping them
in the bus stop trashcan. I see the bus driver nod and his shoulders soften. 
My shoulders also soften. I think: Ulysses is alright with me, 

and I tell him when I see him again:
I am so happy we are on this bewildering ride together.
Thank you for showing me that we can choose to be something else.

It was a sensation like stepping through a spider web – a persistent, gravitational tugging on every atom of his body. When Walter turned around, he found himself staring back from the elevator, dumbfounded. 

This Walter – Elevator Walter – had not moved at all and stood clutching his briefcase to his chest, taking steadying breaths. For him, the split had felt like a Band-Aid unsticking and sliding off in the shower. Still, one cannot overstate the horror. 

After the initial shock, both Walters had the same thought and began to check themselves for signs of corporeal substance in case either was having an out of body experience. They pinched their arms, stamped their feet, put a hand to their faces. Each movement was almost perfectly in sync – a bizarre, mirrored game of Monkey See, Monkey Do – until Lobby Walter took the additional step of tugging on an earlobe while Elevator Walter squeezed his testicles. At this, their paths diverged, and the doors of the elevator slid shut. 

Walter waited a full minute for the doors to reopen and his twin to reappear. Briefly, he contemplated calling the elevator back and pursuing his double on the streets below. But before he could act, he was interrupted by a honey-sweet voice.

“Excuse me, sir?” she said, “Can I help you?” 

He turned to see a woman sitting behind a reception desk, concern painted across her face. Behind her, the law firm’s name was emblazoned in large black letters. A phone blinked persistently to her right. 

“I’m sorry. What?” he asked, returning his eyes to the blank brass doors in front of him. 

“I said ‘Can I help you,’” she replied, “You’ve been standing there a while…” 

“Oh. Right,” he stammered, “I’m here to see Mr. McMichaels. Walter Cambridge. He’s expecting me, I think… Did you see me on the elevator?” 

“On the elevator, sir?” 

“Yes, I…did I get off the elevator?” 

“You’re off the elevator now, sir.”

“Right, but was there anybody else on the elevator with me?” 

“Sir, are you feeling okay?” 

Perhaps he was not, but he bristled at her tone. 

“Sorry, forget about it. Mr. McMichaels, please.” 

The receptionist relaxed and reached for the phone while gesturing to the bank of plush chairs to her left. 

“He’ll be with you shortly.” 

While he waited, Walter worked backwards through the morning. Prior to arriving, he had not walked under any major power lines, nor any industrial waste. He hadn’t consumed any hallucinogenic agents, and he’d waited the prescribed eight hours between a nightcap at the hotel and his morning antidepressant. He’d read that stress can cause symptoms mimicking schizophrenia, but split personalities tended to occupy the same body if not the same mind. Barring all other possibilities, he chalked it up to altitude sickness. 

“Mr. McMichaels will see you now, sir,” chirped the receptionist, “Can I get you something to drink?” 

He decided against asking for a cocktail. 

***

The interview went as expected. Gerry McMichaels was loud, abrasive, and an unrepentant believer that half an hour of sports analysis and dirty jokes was paramount to the success of any serious business meeting. Any thought of doppelgangers or psychotic breaks was banished to the back of Walter’s mind, buried under layers of contempt for the man in front of him. 

After another hour, during which the two men actually talked turkey, McMichaels pressed Walter on his willingness to relocate to Colorado (willing), his availability (immediate), and his opinion of the Designated Hitter (agnostic, but he sensed it was important to take a heated stance on the issue). Satisfied with his responses, he offered Walter the job at exactly market rate and ushered him out the door. 

It wasn’t until after he’d completed a stack of paperwork with Marsha – who managed HR in addition to answering the phones and safeguarding the lobby – that Walter found himself in the elevator once more and remembered the strange encounter. He exited the building into the crisp spring air and mulled the situation, forgoing a ride-share and opting instead to walk the twenty-five blocks back to his hotel. 

At every corner, he scanned the length of each block in both directions, fully expecting to see himself peeking over the top of a newspaper or tucked surreptitiously behind a street vendor’s cart. Instead, he saw only the commotion of a large city that hadn’t quite figured out how to be a large city. Denver had all the noise of Philadelphia with none of the charm. He hadn’t made any meaningful progress with his situation by the time he reached the Hilton, disheveled and in need of a glass of water. His thirst evaporated when he opened the door to his junior suite to find Elevator Walter sprawled across the bed in his sock feet. 

The television was looping the hotel’s welcome screen, with cutaway shots of a Japanese Steakhouse mingling with serene spa footage and emergency exit routes. He had undone his necktie and tossed his jacket over the chair in the corner, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had that morning. In other words, he looked identical to the man, standing in the doorway with his jaw on the floor. 

“You again!” they both exclaimed, and then, “Who are you?” 

“Stop that,” they said.

“No, you stop that,” they said. 

Finally, Walter raised a hand for silence and then pointed to himself slowly.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” he said. 

He was met with silence, as Elevator Walter sat staring from the bed. After another beat, Walter pointed a finger at him, indicating his turn. 

“I was just about to ask the same thing,” said Elevator Walter, “How did you get in here?”

“I have a key,” said Walter, producing the green and white card from his breast pocket.

“So do I,” said Elevator Walter, grabbing his from the nightstand, “But that doesn’t mean anything. They give you two when you check in.”

“I think you’re burying the lede.”

“What?”

“They don’t give you two bodies when you check in.”

“Fair point,” said Elevator Walter. 

“I need to sit down,” said Walter. 

“Be my guest,” said Elevator Walter, sprinkling a little something extra on the final word. 

Walter bristled at the insinuation but decided to let it slide. Even in times of existential crisis, his manners were unquestionable. He sank into the chair, knocking the sport coat to the floor in the process, and took several deep breaths. Elevator Walter rearranged himself on the bed, sitting up against the headboard and bringing his knees to his chest. Finally, he broke the silence.

“What was the name of my first-grade teacher?”

“What?” asked Walter. 

“Well, if you’re an imposter, I need to know. What was her name?”

“Mrs. Woods,” said Walter, “And if anybody’s an imposter, it’s you. I’m me.”

“Impossible,” said Elevator Walter, “I think I would know if I wasn’t me.”

But, of course, they were both correct. So, around and around they went, swapping Walter Trivia ad nauseum. Allergies? Tree nuts, olives, and amoxicillin. Location of birthmarks? Base of the spine, right calf, navel adjacent. First girlfriend? Rebecca Callis. Kinsey score? Two. Credit score? Not much higher. Favorite band? Nirvana. Actual favorite band? Coldplay. Neither flinched.

“Where was I born?’ Elevator Walter asked. 

“Our Lady of the Palms Memorial Hospital,” said Walter.

“Right, but in what city?”

“Tampa.” 

“Ha!” proclaimed Elevator Walter, “Our Lady of the Palms is in St. Pete!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

“It’s an important distinction!” 

“Important how?”

“Culturally.”

Walter didn’t respond, knowing full well there was more culture in a single cup of yogurt than the entirety of West Central Florida. He was also exhausted – drained mentally and beyond the point at which he could be bothered with semantics. Elevator Walter, too, seemed at the end of his rope. Resigned, he took a new tack. 

“Did you take the job? With McMichaels?” 

The question surprised Walter. It was so practical, so matter of fact. He had the impression that Elevator Walter was adjusting to their reality much quicker than he was. 

“Yeah,” he said finally, “I took it.” 

He felt a pang of guilt when the words left his mouth – something that was confirmed by the grimace on Elevator Walter’s face. They had been conflicted about the opportunity for months, ever since firing off a resume in the middle of the night after another missed payment had triggered another argument with Liz. She’d left the previous afternoon, bound for her sister’s house in Winnetka and a fresh start after two middling years wearing Walter’s ring. 

On the surface, nothing about McMichaels, Richmond, and Fluery was especially appealing – corporate law, primarily representing scumbags suing other scumbags. It was a drastic departure from his head-in-the-clouds adventures in environmental litigation. The pay was an improvement, even if he’d be starting at the bottom rung, but that held little attraction for Walter as he packed up what remained of Liz’s belongings and sealed them away in unmarked brown boxes. Still, Denver got his attention. A thousand miles away from everyone he knew and loved; a haven in the mountains like some sort of fairy tale. Never mind the fact that Denver had more in common with Dallas than Vail. 

“I just couldn’t go through with it,” said Elevator Walter, “I thought I could do it – kiss some ass, shake some hands, and start over. I really thought I could do it. Until I got on the elevator. The numbers started going up and I knew I’d rather go crawling back to Chicago than work for those assholes. I mean, my God, they represented that company in China – the one with the suicide nets.”

“Stop,” said Walter, “What did you just say?”

“Suicide nets. They hung them off the side of the building because the people working there kept chucking themselves off.”

“No, the part about the elevator,” said Walter, “You decided in the elevator?”

“Yeah, I just snapped. Like I knew I needed to take my ass home – beg on bended knee and make things right with Liz. That’s when I saw you. I thought I was hallucinating; you know?” 

Walter leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, rubbing the back of his neck in contemplation. 

“Well, that’s it then.”

“What’s it?”

“I decided in the elevator, too. Sometime around the fifteenth floor, it just occurred to me that this was the turning point. No going back. I’d been waffling back and forth, and then the doors opened, and I just knew I had to walk out – no hesitation, or I’d bungle it. That’s what’s different.”

Silence took them again, as they chewed this new development. It was the first meaningful progress they’d made, but neither knew what to do with this information. 

“So, what? You’re saying it’s a magic elevator?” said Elevator Walter.

“I don’t know!” shouted Walter. “All I know is that’s when we split.”

“Call room service,” Walter said.

“What? Why?”

Taking it upon himself, Walter walked over to the phone on the nightstand. 

“We need to learn the rules,” he muttered. 

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the door and two cheeseburgers were rolled into the suite by a pimple-faced girl in a maroon uniform. She removed the silver lids from their trays and looked expectantly at the Walters. 

“Will that be all, Mr. Cambridge?” she asked, rubbing her fingers together, subtly indicating a tip. 

“Ah, no. One more thing,” said Walter, “How many of us are in this room?”

She looked puzzled at first, then concerned, as she scanned the drapes and closet for unknown assailants.

“Um…two?” she said, unsure. 

“So, you don’t see both of us?” asked Elevator Walter.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” said the girl, “Do you need any condiments?” 

“Forget the condiments, do you see both of us? Do we look the same to you?” 

She scanned both their faces.

“Are you having an episode, Mr. Cambridge?”

She left without a tip, which felt cruel, but neither Walter carried cash. They picked at the burgers, both taking extra care to toss the red onion. He’d skipped the continental breakfast that morning, and both seemed better for the sustenance. 

“I don’t understand. She heard both of us, responded to both of us, but couldn’t see both of us,” said Walter through a mouthful. 

Elevator Walter nodded, “Yeah, that’s weird. But maybe it’s like a stereoscope, you know? Like she saw both of us, but then just sort of merged us in her head into one image.”

It was a good thought, and Walter couldn’t fault the logic. Brains do funny things to protect their owners from troubling information. He’d visited the Museum of Illusions when it came through Chicago a few years back, and it had left him unsettled rather than amused. Liz had particularly liked the photo of them together in the same room – the one in which she loomed toward the ceiling, while he was miniscule, under a table. 

“What if she doesn’t take you back?” he asked.

“She will. I know it,” said Elevator Walter.

“So that’s the plan, then, huh? You’re going back to Chicago?”

“Yep. I booked a flight on my phone as soon as the elevator started going down. I called her from the lobby. What about you?”

“I told McMichaels I could start on Monday. His assistant is setting me up with a furnished apartment tomorrow.” 

“Wow, big time.”

“It’s a studio.” 

“Well,” said Elevator Walter, “Look at the bright side. Breakfast in bed, every day of the week.” 

They laughed. Walter had always laughed at his own jokes, and, knowing that, they laughed even harder. 

The following morning, they argued briefly about their belongings. Like the keycards, their phones, briefcases, and wallets had been duplicated, but the luggage in the room had remained singular. Elevator Walter had bristled about leaving behind a hoodie he’d owned since college and a pair of slacks that actually fit well and gave him the illusion of an ass. But given that he’d be returning to their life in Chicago, with a full closet of clothes, furniture, and (potentially) a wife, the trade seemed fair.

They exchanged an awkward goodbye on the street, shaking hands and wishing each other luck. It was the last they would see of one another for many years. 

***

The next split was easier. The one after that, almost an afterthought.

Walter stood to leave a restaurant, and he did not. 

He made an offer on a two-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, and he did not. 

He went to bed with a stranger, and he went home alone to microwave dinner and watch the game. 

Initially, he spoke to each split – asking about their plans and making a mental note of the branching event. But after a couple dozen generations, his interest waned, and the Walters adopted an aloof opinion of one another. He greeted each new iteration with a nod, before carrying on with whatever choice he’d made to cause the split. The shock and novelty were gone.

Five years after he arrived in Denver, Walter was made partner at McMichaels, Richmond, and Fluery. He’d kept his head down and his mouth shut, representing oil and gas conglomerates, union busters, and at least one member of the Mexican Cartels. In every case, he’d successfully bent the law to his will, finding loopholes where others saw jail time and spinning off countless morally conflicted Walters in the process. The firm threw a party for him, complete with an open bar, live band, and photobooth. Three other Walters showed up for the occasion – two in celebration, one in protest. On a lark, the happy Walters took a picture together in the booth, each holding a silly prop and draping their arms across each other’s shoulders as the shutter clicked. The photographer apologized profusely for the overexposed result that showed only a dark blob of arms with a top hat peeking out above. 

The firm expanded, sending him around the country to branch offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Albany. Occasionally, he’d bump into a Walter in the airport or on the street. In LA, he came across a billboard with his face on it, advertising a new crime procedural called “Law Houndz.” It got three seasons and a Made-for-Television movie, but the reviews were mostly negative. Variety called it, “The least memorable hour of your week.” It was canceled and dropped from streaming before he could watch an episode. 

Walter spent the eve of his fortieth birthday in a hotel in Austin. 

He sat perched at the lobby bar for hours, alternating singles and doubles and wondering when bars stopped offering to leave the bottle. He decided it was likely around the same time they removed the swinging double doors and quit calling them saloons. Occasionally, a bank of elevators would chime at his back, and a new carload of travelers would spill into the lobby. Walter stopped looking over his shoulder after the fifth or sixth bell. Sometime around ten o’clock, he was interrupted. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” a familiar voice said. 

It was another Walter – this one clad head to foot in starched denim like a business casual Marlboro Man. His salesman’s smile sparkled with veneers, and his mouth, eyes, and forehead were pulled tight against his skull. 

“Walter,” said Walter. 

“Walter,” said Marlboro Walter, in return, “Happy birthday, old man.”

Walter raised his glass in return. 

“Likewise,” he slurred. “Many happy returns.” 

Marlboro Walter mounted the next stool over and waved two fingers at the bartender. 

“We’re only allowed to serve you one drink at a time, sir,” she said in return. 

Walter slid his glass across the bar to his counterpart. 

“Help yourself. I’m pickled.”

Marlboro Walter drank deeply and let forth a deep sigh of contentment. 

“So,” said Walter, “Which one are you?” 

They compared notes for the better part of an hour. Best they could tell, Marlboro Walter was seven splits removed. A product of Elevator Walter’s lineage, he had returned dutifully to Chicago and won Liz’s heart with promises of change and sacrifice. She found it in herself to give him one more chance and he had made the best of it. Things were great – hell, better than great. He didn’t split again for a full year and there was a baby on the way. She was six months along when stress got the better of him. 

They had just returned from a weekend in the Wisconsin Dells – Liz called it a babymoon. He was working late, poring over a class action piece against Exxon. His paralegal offered him half a joint to keep the midnight oil burning. She lit it and waved the burning end in front of his face like she was smudging the room with sage. The smoke hypnotized him, and he noticed she’d undone the top two buttons of her blouse. Elevator Walter stood immediately and took the first train home to his pregnant wife. Marlboro Walter had not. 

“After that, I bounced around for a while,” Marlboro Walter said, “Took the first flight I could find to Cancun and spent a while hopping between beds. I missed Liz for a bit, but I was never sure about the kid thing, you know? Ha! Of course you know.”

But Walter did not know. 

Marlboro Walter drained his glass and ordered a double, splitting it between two glasses and offering Walter another round. 

“Something about the freedom down there in Mexico really lit my fire. Split two or three times in the first month; I just couldn’t say no to a good time. One night, I ended up in the sack with this married couple from Houston – bigwig finance guy who liked to watch, among other things. His wife was a looker. Real sweet, but you could tell she was in it for the money. It didn’t seem to bother him any, though; he had such a ball, he offered me a job right then and there as we were all showering off together. Haven’t looked back since.” 

Part of Walter was disgusted to see this baser model of himself prattle on about his exploits. But if he was honest, he wasn’t shocked. Nothing about the Walters ever shocked him, not really. Each version he’d met had been just another expression of everything he’d known to be true about himself. The meek ones, the nasty ones, the sad sacks, the gurus, the criminals, and the saints – each offered him a glimpse into a life he could have led. Deep down, he knew he was perhaps the only boring Walter. He was the trend line of the bunch – only included in the data to show how far the others had strayed from the mean. 

“Say, why don’t we get out of here?” said Marlboro Walter, with a wink “It’s our birthday, after all. We might as well celebrate!” 

He gave Walter’s leg a squeeze under the bar top, making him jump in his seat. 

“You can’t be serious,” Walter said, coughing on a silver of ice he’d swallowed in surprise.

“Why not? You’ve never partied with one of us?” 

“I…no,” he admitted, “The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.” 

“You’re full of shit and we both know it, amigo,” said Marlboro Walter,” but in case you change your mind…”

He pulled a piece of green plastic from his jacket pocket and left it on the bar with the room number facing up. He drained his drink and stood to leave, slapping Walter on the back. 

“You know what I remember most about that morning in Denver?,” he asked, not waiting for a reply, “What a tight-ass I used to be.” 

He winked to punctuate the pun and headed for the door, leaving Walter to contemplate the dredges of his drink and the keycard in front of him. He couldn’t decide if using it would be incestuous or purely masturbatory. In the end, it didn’t matter. 

Walter tuned forty alone in his room. 

***

The Walters grew old. Many died. 

A Walter in Minnesota had frozen to death after falling through the ice on the pond behind his house. Another in California perished of heat exhaustion during the warmest summer on record. Three Walters had succumbed to a rare form of cancer that had been lurking in their DNA, waiting to be activated by some fluke of environment or circumstance. There were car accidents and suicides and at least one homicide (second degree). Only one Walter had died of a broken heart. 

A version of Walter Cambridge had been elected to the state senate in Tennessee; another earned the Key to the City of St. James Parish, Louisiana. He’d written seventeen novels, three histories, and a memoir. He had never been nominated for any major awards in literature. In total, the Walters had produced 4,756 children and 8,913 grandchildren – none of whom looked remarkably like any of the rest. 

Over the years, many of the Walters had tried to connect the group, online and in-person. 

The Society of Walter maintained an office in Dover, Delaware, complete with four full-time employees who were paid a premium to entertain the fantasies of their eccentric employer. They divided their days taking messages from Walter to Walter, and occasionally they booked out large event spaces for no obvious reason. 

At least fourteen Facebook groups were dedicated to uniting the Walters. Strangely, each group only ever sported one member, no matter how many Walters logged in to join. They never did quite figure out the rules. 

Walter – our Walter – had never partaken in any of this madness, preferring instead to plow steadily ahead. When McMichaels died in his sleep, he had inherited the lion’s share of the firm. With his newfound influence, he’d promptly severed ties with nearly all their blue-chip clients and redirected their efforts toward special causes. It was the first bold action he’d taken since that morning years before when he’d stepped off the elevator; he regretted it almost immediately. The company floundered and he was removed as partner within six months. 

After thirty-five years with the firm, Walter retired as a Senior Associate – the same level at which he’d been hired. He packed a banker’s box full of the accoutrements of a respectable career. Plaques, certificates, framed photos of various parties and vacations. Piece by piece, he disassembled his career and stacked it haphazardly. Then, on his way out of the building, he shoved the box into the trash chute. He listened carefully for the impact far below but heard only the dwindling scrape of cardboard against aluminum. Then, there was nothing. 

Walter drove himself home to a modest brownstone in Five Points that he had never outgrown. Its weathered brick façade had served him well, always giving him a feeling of permanence – of continuity.

As he backed into a parking spot on the street, he noticed a man standing on his porch, patiently waiting as Walter angled against the curb. 

“So,” he said as he approached the porch, “Which one are you?”

“You don’t recognize me?” the man replied.

Walter scanned the man carefully, surprised as always at how elderly he’d become. This Walter shared his snow-white hair and thick, spotted forearms. He leaned imperceptibly to his right, doubtless due to the trick hip Walter himself had developed over the years. On his left hand, he wore a dull gold wedding band. 

Walter tugged his earlobe. The man on the porch squeezed his testicles.

“It’s you,” he said, dumbfounded.

Elevator Walter smiled and nodded.

Walter’s heart leapt, as if seeing an old friend for the first time in many years. In fact, he supposed, this was his oldest friend. He unlocked the door and hurried Elevator Walter inside. The questions began before they even sat down.

“How did you find me?” 

“You never left,” said Elevator Walter.

“Why did you wait this long?”

“I was living.” 

“Is Liz with you?”

Elevator Walter offered him a sad smile. 

“She passed last year. Breast cancer.”

“Same as…”

“Her mother. Yes.”

Walter felt the loss as if it were his own. He offered a hand, which Elevator Walter took. They sat in silence for a while. 

“Why are you here?” Walter asked finally, wiping small tears away from the corners of his eyes. 

Elevator Walter hesitated, then spoke. 

“It’s time to end this.”

Walter shuddered at the finality in his voice. 

“It’s time, Walter.”

“But,” he whispered, “I’m the original. I’m me.” 

Elevator Walter shook his head. 

“We all think we’re the original. And we’re all right.”

Walter began to tremble. He’d often wondered how it all would end – whether he would continue to split indefinitely until every inch of the world was populated by a Walter, or if they would continue to wither and die one-by-one until only he was left.

“What about the others?” he asked.

“Gone,” said Elevator Walter, “It’s just us.” 

Walter asked how this was possible. There were times in his life when he couldn’t go out to lunch without bumping into another version of himself. Surely, they couldn’t all be gone. One look into Elevator Walter’s eyes was all it took to convince him otherwise. 

They were the same hazel he’d seen in the mirror for nearly seventy years. But unlike his own, Elevator Walter’s eyes swam with infinite lifetimes. These eyes had seen the sunrise in Waikiki, burning red against an inky horizon. They had stung with fatigue after driving a thousand miles in a day to make it to the birth of their second daughter. They had witnessed crimes and read love letters and winked at strangers in countless bars. These eyes were patient, kind, cruel, scheming, wise, clever, dull, dumb, glazed, and eagle sharp. 

These eyes were his own, and they weren’t. They were waiting for Walter to decide. 

“I’m scared,” said Walter. 

“Don’t be,” said Elevator Walter, “It’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s like going home.” 

At this, he stood and pulled Walter to his feet. They stood at arm’s length, facing each other as they had so many years ago. Without a word, they fell into an embrace. Their atoms tingled with recognition as they sought their pairs. Walter let loose a breath. And then another. 

In the silence of his home, he could hear his heart racing. And then he was alone. 

I thought each seat and body
must have found some hidden correspondence—
they say a single root system carries across acres in Utah—here,
 
each without a plan makes its own way
to a similar end, and I know leaving the city
could not have been less simple
 
if only for a change in monsoon patterns; if only for another transit line
the winter in Denver reminds me of evenings with you on the lawn—
but that same night the train that carried the wind
 
                              turbines moved so gently we hardly heard it at all.

Would it be enough to say
That I’ll sit at this grave,
Dogshit on my sneakers, flowers wilting over?
I sleep next to the skeletons
Higher men want forgotten.
Call me Cheesman, call me high.
He threw me in a box and threw away the key.
He might as well be the mayor for demolishing me.

The first third of the novel shines. Fassler does a fantastic job of allowing us to connect with his protagonist even as the gripping, incendiary start of the narrative tapers into an account of Jane’s days on the road. Soon enough, however, Jane’s wanderings culminate in a run-in with Barry, an off-the-grid recluse brimming with passion for his pet project: granting humans the power of flight. Worriedly observing Barry, but never mustering the nerve to intervene, is his son Ike.

Although beautifully written, the novel markedly slows as Jane folds herself into Barry and Ike’s lives and work. Fassler uses this lull in momentum to explore the bonds that tie these characters to one another and to the rest of the world, diving into Jane’s familial relationships, Ike’s desire to experience a normal life, and the ways each of them respond to Barry’s vision. It is at this point that Jane’s relatability begins to waver. Her desire for purpose and the allure of flight do not fully justify how rarely she thinks about what she has committed to; nor do they justify her rather quick willingness to trust the strange men she’s fallen in with, especially as a young woman.

Despite this, Jane’s interactions with Barry and Ike are compelling and complex, with tension building as the novel increases in pace. The story banks in a macabre fashion and plunges into horror genre territory but becomes all the better for it. There is a rewarding payoff foreshadowed from the beginning, and Fassler plays up the consequences of his characters’ actions in a commentary on unchecked individualism and the cost of the breakdown of social ties. Not much is left up to interpretation. The final act and coda are neatly resolved, with takeaways summed up in Jane’s reflections. The ending may have been stronger if some inferring was left to the reader, but it is overall a satisfying resolution after 400+ pages. 

Though The Sky Was Ours is marketed as a retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, it is only loosely based on the original tale and stands on its own as a thoughtful commentary on human desire, the need to drive change, and what it means to belong to a society. Evocative and largely propelled by character studies, it will appeal to those who enjoy a slower pace and well-crafted writing.

a perfect little world that doesn’t really need you
				(Laurie Anderson)

I 

At evening as air darkens
past shades of indigo into night 

watch a bird fly left to right across
a field of vision 

lighthouse was a word a kind 
of comfort to the sailor but a house 

made of light has no word 
the full field of vision is a house

within which I live there is more
beyond the edges I do not see

lightness itself I do not see 
nor weather nor largeness nor am I

standing in a boat to watch the wake
as signature nor comment on crossing

nor is there reason to move across water
with pennants on shore one-winged birds

fly nowhere ashore not silent nor 
the sound of one lip the winged

penitent angels do not speak the written
is not the spoken for nor is a pen in motion

like the unflapping wing of the angel silent
as afternoon approaches and morning

collapses past the past
silent as one hand collapsing

the botany angel is careful to touch
nothing nor breathe heavily

I walk toward my own shadow
to protect my face from sun

the same sun now shining through 
the alert ears of the rabbit at sunrise

who appears to know something
beyond what vision offers

who knows to not move until danger
is touchingly close.

II

It is as if the rabbit lives
in a glass house of light like television

whose ears collect
rays of radio invisible lightlike.