 Photo by Sergio Camalich on Unsplash My mom cooks bistik ayam with chicken wings because I like chicken skin and wings really maximize skin to flesh ratio, and with extra broth because I eat my bistik ayam like soup instead of with rice like normal people. She learned the original recipe from her mom and her mom from hers and her mom’s mom from hers. But that’ll be the end of the line because I don’t plan on ever having children, but also mainly because I refuse to have my mom teach me. When she asks me why, I often just shrug and tell her it’s okay. Or that I’m lazy. Or that I only like it when she makes it. Or that I only like it when we eat it together. I never share that I’m scared that my bistik ayam won’t be as good as hers and that it’ll make me sad because I have to eat my bistik ayam instead of hers because she lives ten thousand miles away. And that I’m even more scared that my bistik ayam will be just as good as hers and that it’ll make me even sadder because it’ll be further proof that I no longer need her. Or that to me, bistik ayam has come to embody the amount of time that we have left together. I eat bistik ayam twice a year, once when she visits in the summer and once when I visit in the winter, so the number of times that she has left to make me bistik ayam is equal to the number of times that I still get to hug her hello and tell her that it’s nice to see her. Which is also equal to the number of times that I still get to hug her goodbye and tell her that I’ll see her soon and actually do get to see her soon. Or that after she’s gone, I never want to find out if bistik ayam will taste just as sweet and rich as it’s supposed to or salty like my tears or bitter like her ashes. Because then bistik ayam will just be chicken wings in sweet brown soup without the sight of her smiling proudly for having done something I like. And without the smell of sweet soy sauce and white pepper and butter and shallots and nutmeg permeating her skin and clothes. And without the sound of her laughing at how I’m eating my bistik ayam all wrong and wondering why I so stubbornly choose not to learn how to make bistik ayam.
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 Photo by Mario Azzi on Unsplash Before He steals your breath sometimes. The story you tell is a fine line passed from his lips and tongue as he holds you down. You memorize him quickly; this will be on the test. You are girlfriend: the only one who understands him. Once, he punches the door when you shut it so you can pee and cry. Rainbow flowers bloom on your neck your arms your breasts your inner thighs, but he kisses the flowers away with gentle tears. You know the pressure of his forehead on your belly, his arms tight around your waist as he kneels and apologizes and tells you things. His devotion is an incandescent bulb always on and radiant with heat. You no longer feel your hands, so you wouldn't know if this is love or arson. During You are a basement with a long blue couch and no windows. You are heartbeat, a thunderous drum. You are shallow breath and stiff muscles. A blue couch cushion pressed down and down. His hands and his knees. You are wait. You are stop. You are your words lost in his mouth—breathed in, chewed up, swallowed down. You are his fingers. You are wait. You are stop. You are the sound of him. You are red light behind your eyes. You are it. You are tag you’re it. You are full of worms and dirt and him. You are nothing. You are a percussion instrument. Dark light bulbs. A ceiling fan with still blades. You are white noise. You are his toothy smile. You are the wallpaper train circling the crown molding. A boxcar with open doors and no cargo. After Days later you take your first shower, if standing still under hot water counts as trying. You tilt your head so the stream runs into your ears and you hear only breath and heartbeat. You do not wash yourself: he stole your hands: now every touch is his. You set the tap as hot as you can stand and once the heat stops hurting you turn it up again and again and when you can't make it any hotter, you make it icy cold. Repeat until you feel nothing not even the pulse of him or the water beating your skin. You wish you could do something about the him on the inside.
 Photo by Karl Callwood on Unsplash The swamp was the best place to watch wading birds, and wading birds were the only birds I watched. Sully didn’t like the swamp, but he drove us there anyway. He was going to propose. Otherwise, he wouldn’t waste the trip to some place only I liked. Sully was quieter than normal, but I chalked it up to nerves. Proposing was a big deal. He didn’t have to worry. Even though he hated swamps I’d say yes. Marriage was about compromise. We followed faded signs to a boardwalk connecting two mudflats. I looked for the soft glow of alligator eyes between gaps in the planks. Sully walked with his hands in his pocket, protecting the ring from falling into the water. Cattails and spider lilies crept up and twisted around the splintering wood. Glass glass beer bottles glistened in the shallow water. I wanted to fish them out, but Sully stopped me. “Marci,” Sully said. “If you fall in the water, you’re on your own.” The water would give me a bacterial infection if it touched my skin, he said. “If you fall in the water, I’ll jump in after you,” I said. Sully needed me. He didn’t know how to swim. Sully didn’t say anything because he saw a dead bird. It was a great egret. Its body was washed up on the mudflat but its head floated on the water. Turtles surfaced and the bird’s neck swayed in the ripples. Maggots were feasting on its flesh underneath a thinning layer of feathers. Sunlight caught on the water and the remains of the bird morphed into a passing cloud, and I couldn’t tell them apart. “Are you okay?” Sully asked. “I’m okay.” The bile in my stomach burned the back of my throat. The air was stale and sweat dripped down my forehead. Sully knelt and untied his shoe. He could have picked a better spot. I didn’t want to think of a rotting carcass every time I held the diamond to the sky, but it was nice of him to try and cheer me up. Sully wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I met someone else,” he said. There were other great egrets off in the distance, but cicadas drowned out their low crocks. “I did too,” I said. It was a lie. I only wanted him. The wind blew and the stench from the decomposing carcass drifted up and wrapped itself around Sully. I took small breaths through my mouth, but I tasted the rotten flesh on my tongue. I gagged. Sully walked to the end of the boardwalk and crushed tall blades of cordgrass underneath his feet. If he stayed in the same place too long, the soles of his shoes would leave an imprint. I stood next to him, and sank into the ground, the algae-laden water pooling around the outsoles of my shoes. I shoved Sully and he broke the surface of the water, distorting the reflections of cypress and tupelo trees.
 Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash The size of the moon startles me as I step onto my porch. It is large and high in the sky. I forgot today is the full moon. Good luck. New intentions. My shadow is extra-long across the sidewalk in front of me when I start my walk. I talk to myself like I do, in the quiet of the morning. Is that Jupiter glowing to the right side of the moon? Is there a right side of the moon? Or is it just my right side? Does the moon have sides? I give the tiny glowing light to the right of the moon a wave and whisper: hi Jupiter, even knowing, despite knowing, it could very well not be Jupiter; I could be waving at a satellite. They say not to look at your phone right when you wake up, but I do anyway, each day before my walk. Your tumor is back. It took your mom three full paragraphs before she said the words again. I want to re-read the message. Scour it. I take a deep breath, blow it into my hands, warm them up, then shake them out a couple times and keep walking. The phone shifts in my pocket, tapping against my hip with each step. I can feel it there, pressing against me, light and heavy at the same time. The shadows of the trees are short and sideways in the extra moonlight. Distorted, they look wrong, but I can see the proper shape of the leaves at the edge of the shadows if I squint just right. Trying to find their shape in the dark feels like a game, like comfort. I count how many leaves I can find as I go past each tree. Five, then three, then four, then seven. I stop counting at seven. Lucky number seven. The coyotes ruffle around to my left. Or maybe it’s some javelinas. I’m not worried. We leave each other alone. I like to think it’s because they know me by now. They are readying for breakfast or sleep. I never know which. I like to wonder about that, about their lives. I give them a little wave, too. Past the coyotes or javelinas, at the end of the long curving corner of the gravel path, I have a perfect view of the full moon. I think: orb, and smile a wobbly, little smile. I love that word, I whisper. I wonder about the message in my pocket. I take some time to launch some prayers, shoot them toward the moon. I make sure as many prayers go up as tears do, down my face. The squeak from the soles of my shoes is loud when I hit pavement again. I try my best to follow my extra-long moonlight shadow down the street. I am unable to catch it no matter how fast I walk, no matter how hard I try. Brandy Reinke is an author living in Phoenix, Arizona. She has published short-fiction pieces in: The Redrock Review, Esthetic Apostle, Tulane Review, Big Muddy Review, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Moonstone Arts, and the HCE Review. She was a finalist in Alternating Current Press’ 2024 Luminaire Poetry Award, awarded an Honorable Mention in short fiction in Glimmer Train’s final publication, as well as had a piece short-listed in the Fish Anthology. Her novel was short-listed as a finalist for Unleash Press’ Inaugural 2022 Book Prize.  Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash It started, as it always does, with a small movement. We sat at the dining room table, our heads bowed for grace, when I noticed it. Just beside my chair the tattered fringe of my mother’s hand woven Persian carpet lifted ever so slightly and curled over on itself. I slid my foot closer to my body as we said Amen. Then she began to escalate. There were the blonde hairs that fell across my shoulders and lap while I read, the sound of sheer fabric sweeping the floor as I scurried across the hardwood to get a glass of water at night, the single wool socks that never make it back from laundry. I hid my mother’s lipsticks because I knew she was using them. I could smell her perfume lingering on everything, the eyeshadows, the cakey translucent powder. I prayed my mother wouldn't notice. At school, Marcie from Spanish warned me about Artie’s, the old firehouse-turned-antique store in town. Things come home with you when you go there. And I’m not talking about the items you buy, she said. Other things. But when I decided to skip 6th period and wander through the unsteady stacks of yellowing books and walnut desks, I found her on a shelf between A Curious Farmer’s Field Guide and Best Baseball Stats: 2001--the centerfold page falling open to reveal her photo, the white lace, the barn setting, her eyes at half mast, her sheer skirt dipping across her lap, Miss October 1976. She wasn’t on a sketchy website, or hidden behind a group of snickering high school faces; she was published in gloss across three pages, elegant, proud. And I couldn’t leave without her. But the haunting was getting worse. Small fires began to start in the basement, my father’s church shirts turned up shredded, boiling cups of tea tipped and fell into our laps. My mother had to stick a wooden spoon in the kitchen window frames so they wouldn’t slam shut while she cooked. On a night when Father Bard came for dinner he left the table to use the bathroom and after ten minutes tore down the hall and out the front door, his coat still swaying on the coat rack. That night, I knelt beside my bed and slid her from her hiding place between the pages of a biology textbook. Please stop, I begged, I’ll do anything. I don’t want anyone knowing you’re here. Just then, a draft moved through my bedroom, fluttering the captivating look in her eyes, and I understood. It all made sense. I knew why she was so agitated. The next morning I rummaged through the box way in the back of the closet and found one of my mother’s wool hats, my father’s scarf, a thick pair of socks that were lined with fuzz. I folded them neatly and tucked them under the bed, next to the stack of textbooks. There was silence for a while, and I laid awake each night, worried that she had left me. But I was wrong. The hauntings returned, but now, they were sweet. The trashcan nudged closer to the counter to catch a falling potato peel, our clothes already warm when we dressed in the winter, a soft hand on the shoulder when things got tough. I was relieved. Now, Miss October 1976 is there for me when I need her, perpetually smiling through deep red lipstick, her clothes slouching away from her body, her hair poofed with hot rollers, her thumb grazing her cheekbone. I admire her most nights. Take her out and gaze over her. I imagine her voice, her laugh. I’ll keep her forever. I’ll learn to be seductive in her specific way. She is everything. She was just cold. Kale Choo Hanson is a writer from Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Peatsmoke Journal, Grande Dame Literary and Lunar Lit Magazine. She holds an MFA from Temple University and is working on her first novel.
 Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash I am at the point where it is hard to remember precisely when things happened. Or in what order. I am not good with dates, never have been, will over- or hugely under-estimate how long it has been since ______ . Even when the events were of great significance: A birth. A death. The day I met the person who is literally the most important individual in my life. They blend together, months and years, jumble around. Most often I recall a scent, or the weather that day, if there was snow on the ground yet or if we were wearing shorts. In real life things do not march in orderly lines toward their conclusions. Some effects have no causes, some causes no direct consequences. You let go of blame over time. This happened, and this, but one did not bring the other into being. Like husbands, arguments, kisses. Like departures that in retrospect seem just natural next steps in the walk of life. I carved a pumpkin out of habit, will hang up the stockings when the calendar says it is time. Were my parents still alive when my niece was born, the young woman who is now planning her wedding? I did not know about my ex-husband’s heart attack until months later. He could have died. But he didn’t. And I met him in the produce aisle one day by chance, heard the whole story. And then have not seen him once since. What are the odds for anything? Everything seems to happen at once, and I still wake up the next morning unprepared. I put a clock in every room, yet am surprised that the hands keep turning.
 Photo by Jorge Bermudez on Unsplash With every heaving breath Elpis took, I saw / god’s bet twinkling in her eyes. Her skin was / transparent—I could see each quiver of her pulse, each hiss / of her garden-snake veins—and I don’t know / if this is the perennial of God’s will but Mama told me / god’s angels have swallowed Elpis, leaving her / frostbitten. I still don’t know / what god Mama spoke of, but Papa says / Elpis is dying, he said her flesh would tighten around her bones /as her eyes sank and her legs crumbled. And I cried / I cried until my eyes rang bloodshot, the innocent glimmer / of Elpis between my matted lashes. Elpis, matted / with tears and a scream prying open my lips. / And slithering out my lips was the gutting sound of a mother losing / her firstborn daughter, of my pupils shrinking / back into my sockets and Elpis’s hands wrinkling my breath / and now when I put my palm in hers, my fingers interlace hers and I see / the prairies she never visited, the daisies and dandelions she braided / around her forearms, each petal falling with a beat of her heart. And underneath her glazed eyes, pink roses / swirling with the black rot as summer parasites blossom, blossom with the pain of a fresh bruise each time / I press it.
 Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash for Kate Suppose I stopped running from the walls of your overly decorated bedroom. Suppose I let your laughter twirl my hair, suppose I let my stomach knot, you lay bedridden blocks away, your heart readying to stop. Suppose I stopped running and let the soles of my feet bleed into the road’s endless tar, bordered by the blanket of grass fields. Suppose the silence of summer became too sweet to swallow, the puffs of breath clouding the air like caramel cigar smoke. Suppose I stopped running and filled your maple-soft hand with mine. Suppose your pulse slowed as mine quickened. Suppose your eyelids, touched by gravity, finally closed. Suppose I stopped running and October never ended and the orange and brown leaves clung to their branches and my tears clung to my eyes. Suppose I sat in the frosted grass and whispered in your ear and stared into your sea-black eyes. Suppose pain blessed my heart and my unfulfilled promises don’t hurt anymore. Suppose my words will float off this wrinkled paper and my rhymes will be silk. Suppose you hear me. But you don’t. So I keep running.
 Photo by Said Alamri on Unsplash You asked me to come, and I did, even though I knew it was wrong. In that city of beaten red clay and ramparts, you took my hand and led me through medieval keyhole arches and thin, ribbonlike passages meant to confuse the enemy and disperse the jinn. Some doors led to cool, leafy fountain courtyards. Other doors led to riads rotting from neglect. We were in the medina on the other side of the world, far away from anyone and anything familiar; we could do whatever we wished. We skipped through the souks admiring the beauty of the ordinary – this ancient stone, these odours of cinnamon, clove and rose. Brass lanterns and swords. Bins of talismans. We spied on men in long saffron robes smoking hookahs in their cafes. Young teenage boys cried out – Hey! Who are you? Where you go? I take you. – and we walked past them laughing, as if you already knew the way. You had finished your lectures, and the days unfurled before us now like a fresh piece of paper. Do you know where you’re going? – I asked, hearing the oddest thrill of excitement in my voice, looking vaguely round and letting myself be drawn further in. A bright-eyed boy sold the sweetest orange juice in the square and a suited man named Azeem had shone shoes beneath the clock tower for all his life. The barber, the cobbler, the tooth puller – each shop was nothing more than a wobbly chair. Children behind every shop counter cheated you of change but you didn’t care. You chuckled at the mule with a carburetor tied to its back and the crooked man who called out Balak! Balak! as they passed. From the tiny bakery, you chose a slice of the thousand-layer cake and ate it in three bites. In the mosque, you pointed out the calligraphy that was engraved on the ceiling and walls, the calligraphy that was almost everywhere in the city, you said. For these people had always believed that writing was sacred. Writing was their word of God. Outside, the smiling guard who’d been watching us mistook us for married, asking if this was the honeymoon. But no, I wanted to say, covering my hair again. There’s a wife who knows nothing of this. We are in the realm of the Forbidden. A man stepped out of a doorway and invited us into his carpet shop, away from the heat, and rug after rug was spread out before our feet as three cups of mint tea were poured. When we emerged, it was from a door on a different side and the scene had changed completely. A girl sat weaving in a dark room beneath a single bulb. A blind boy stood singing. ~ I woke from the dream (of what?), the call to prayer echoing through the sky. Come back, you said, pulling me in again and slipping a hand between my legs. ~ Every night at dusk, the main square filled with musicians and storytellers. An old man, remarkably tall and thin, held up various props – a giant ostrich egg and feather plume and sword – as he told tales of choices and danger and fate. A wide-eyed woman with a ruby on her forehead felt it her duty to translate to me. You have the eyes to see you are caught in one story, and the heart to know you could change it to another. We ate sheep brains at the stall of a boy who pointed the way to his brother’s rooftop bar, promising it had the best view of anywhere. Dozens of people just like us were there. You gave me a tiny pill and my heart quickened in beat with the drums. It was our last night and I spun round and round, the sounds echoing loudly within me because perhaps it was true that I was hollow at the core. In the morning, I’d leave, and you’d switch cities, and your wife and children would join you. I glanced up and saw you watching me from the other side without any expression at all. I am alone, I thought, leaning into the sparkly air. Sometime later, I went back down to search for the toilet. There, through the tiniest window, I looked into the yellow room across the alley where someone, sitting before a mirror, was drawing a picture of herself.
East Bay Times—July 5, 2021
At dawn, the sun is confirmed dead. Loss is heavy, eerie, foreign. Shoveling mounds of debris, oak, and rubble, I locate pieces of ruined porcelain—the head of Buddha, decapitated. I am learning how to mourn without tears the way my parents did after losing their home, their belongings in the Vietnam War, escaping by boat on hazardous seas, displaced and separated in refugee camps, immigrating to America with nothing but hope.
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