

Editorial Board

PUBLISHER

Huriyah Taliha Quadri

CHIEF EDITOR

Sam Le Butt

HEAD OF PROSE

Christa Marie

HEAD OF POETRY

Paige Elizabeth Wajda

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jack Ferguson

Kat Herron

Zala Jambrovic Hatic

Stefano Paparo

Jeda Pearl Lewis

Lauren Thurman

Skye Wilson

Alexandra Ye

Contents

Editorial Board

Introduction

Sam Le Butt, Chief Editor

Foreword

Christina Neuwirth

Home

Sasha R. Moghimi-Kian

One Day They Landed

Jennifer Dickinson

I Love You Sugarplum

Alexandra Ye

God Save

Shivani Sekar

White

Nathan Pascu

The Golden Mean

Luciana Erregue-Sacchi

Left

Ely Percy

The Forager of Stories

Toonika Guha

Robot de cocina

Sofía Ballesteros

Kitchen Robot

Sofía Ballesteros

Municipal Villanelle (an interlude)

Lydia Unsworth

Waith and Wrack

Juliette F. Martin

All the Vulnerable Things

Vina Nguyen

The Milestones

Wes Lee

The Mermaid's Grave

Mariann Evans

Flotsam at Dough

John Tinneny

storm season

Quinn Lui

Mosaicism

Milagros Lasarte

Where the Heart is

Lola Gaztañaga Baggen

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Becca McGilloway

Some Kind of Love

Ethel Maqeda

A poem for my hometown

Melanie Maclennan

The Fleeting Tale of Demeter

Lucy Rose

The Bursting of the Dam

Claire Hinchliffe

Home

Christopher Moore

Taigh nam Fithich (House of Ravens)

Kirsteen Bell

The World Methusala Made

Ruth Bradshaw

Winter Threads

Susan Taylor

What Color Am I?

Marjorie Waterman

End and Beginning

Alexis Keir

Simple

Jude Gray

Somebody Else's Mirror

Jan McCarthy

I Meet the Gods

Charlotte Rattray

A Long Convalescence

Judith Skillman

Contributors
Introduction

Sam Le Butt, Chief Editor

It is no more than an unsettling coincidence that the publication of this anthology, which has been in the process of making for close to a year, comes at a time when its theme rings with more relevance than any of us could have imagined when the project began. Eleven months ago, we asked potential contributors to give us a little sense of what 'home' means to them; be it a place, a person, a feeling; be it safety, entrapment, or somewhere in between. Little did we know that, at the time of publication, this notion would be engulfing a third of the world's population with both stifling urgency and protracted necessity. Following the current global health crisis, the concept of home may remain irrevocably changed. Our experiences over the next few months will change how we feel about 'home'; hopefully, it will awaken a greater, radical questioning of our wider, collective home, and how our disproportionate infringement on its natural boundaries has forced us back into our burrows. Hopefully.

But for now, we invite you to linger in homes untouched by whatever new present notions the word has taken on. We ask you to journey back. I defer to our wonderful foreword author Christina Neuwirth for a better evocation of the kind of homes you will encounter in this collection, but it is safe to say that through these stories and experiences, the notion of home is elasticated and stretched; yes, to include all those for whom it is a simple and comforting place of safety, a feeling of exuberance and nostalgia, but also to recognise the complexities of difference and belonging it presents for others; and to offer hope in the notion of change for all. Indeed, the collection has been assembled to mirror a journey that many characters and voices seem to make in synecdoche within the pieces themselves; a journey where things get much darker before they can get any lighter. There are moments of contemplation that lead to unsettling realisations and knowledge, moving through pain and grief, before emerging, through fearless questioning and self-determination, into a hard-earned peace. There is love the whole way through, but make it until to the end, and therein lie some of the most stunning moments of all.

This anthology would not exist without the tireless work of the entire team at The Selkie. I have unending pride in and gratitude for the countless hours of volunteered time that brought this work into being. First and foremost, I would like to thank and acknowledge our incredible editing team, specifically Jack Ferguson, Kat Herron, Zala Jambrovic Hatic, Jeda Pearl Lewis, Lauren Thurman, Skye Wilson, and Alexandra Ye. Special thanks go to our incredible Heads of Prose and Poetry, Christa Marie and, at the time of the project, Paige Wajda – and also to our new Head of Poetry, Stefano Paparo, for taking up the reins towards the end. I would also like to thank the wider Selkie editorial board, including co-founders Chelsea Welsh and Sonali Misra, along with my fellow Chief Editor Lexie Angelo, for all their help with the anthology, but also for their tireless work in all other aspects of the The Selkie happening simultaneously to this project. Special thanks to co-founder Lis Mesa for her outreach work, which helps us find new talent all the time. I would also like to specifically mention Hollie Monaghan for her excellent management of our social media, and include a shout out to Rabeea Dar for the creation of our logo, the enduring power of which never ceases to help and support the visibility and growth of The Selkie and our mission statement to to amplify marginalised voices. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Aimée Rogers for her translation services, and Christina Neuwirth for penning our foreword; it always means so much to us when outside agents are able to support us and our contributors at no cost, since our entire team runs on voluntary effort. It is an effort that rests entirely on passion and dedication to publishing exceptional voices; ideals that are no better exemplified than in our Publisher, Huriyah Quadri. Her superhuman commitment and work deserves endless recognition.

But I would like to reserve my greatest thanks to our contributors; poet, artist, and storyteller alike, in particular Susan Taylor, whose poem 'Winter Threads' provided the inspiration for the title of this anthology. It is their words and images that come together to produce this electrifying collection on the notion of home, and it makes me incredibly proud that we, in turn, have been able to provide a home for them. I hope you enjoy reading the collection.
Foreword

Christina Neuwirth

Every type of home, from the home we make in our own bodies to the big collective home of our planet, is at times called into question by our current global political and civil discussions. What kind of body do we accept, do we protect? How do we understand our relationship to and our responsibility for the spinning space rock we live on? Having a home is serious. In the stories, poems and non-fiction essays in the following collection we find not one fixed notion of home, but a spinning multitude that reflects this continual movement and change. My home is a blue door, a warm cat, my mother's clothes, the forest, but there are infinite possibilities of what a home can be. Reading this work, which is vulnerable and difficult and comforting and unsettling and generous, I am reminded of that universe-feeling of knowing yourself surrounded by a large number of strangers who all have their own interior lives, their own notion of where they are travelling to and where they are coming from.

In this anthology we move from homes on endless rooftops connecting a neighbourhood, into home as recognisable sounds made by the seasons. There is home as a place with spatial and geographical attributes – a brick and mortar home, a home with walls and windows. Home as rooted in the urban environment outside, in its sounds, and home as changed by industry, weather occurrences and politics.

Some of the stories are about a home that is lost. About a paper bag full of apricots that taste... not quite right, not quite like the ones we remember. About an apparition of a parent you have lost, who is nevertheless right there before your eyes. When homes are lost to us there is pain in that loss, but also choice. In one of my favourites from this anthology, Mariann Evans' 'The Mermaid's Grave', the protagonist Casey finds solace in the otherness of a mermaid; Casey knows that if she spoke of who she loved, her home of South Uist would reject her, and so she feels as alien and as without belonging as the mermaid. But Casey has also found a new home in Glasgow. There can be a home again, even when there is one we have lost.

Many of the homes in this anthology carry pain, like Casey's. There is a home torn-apart after a break-up. There are many haunted homes, haunted either through their geographical orientation or through their unwillingness to let go of us. Homes that have put hooks into our flesh, that we want to escape, that we are always fighting against. Homes that we want to leave, but that leaving is also painful. Interpersonal stories stand alongside and woven into political stories of citizenship – what paperwork do we have to show for the places that we call home? The pain of a traumatic home follows us in one of the stories, and pops up in unexpected places. There is a haunting that seems to be tied to a house, but is actually inside us.

Home is not static, it is fluid. Home, in these stories, is language and smell. It is always changing, and it is a work in progress. Home can be a project, something we work on, something we make for ourselves and for others, as an individual or through collective effort. Many of the pieces in this anthology talk about losing a parent, and about the home we find ourselves making in their absence. Sometimes there is a home in a silence. Sometimes we can reframe our childhood memories to select what about them is home – home is this, not that (as in Sasha R. Moghimi-Kian's 'Home'). That, too, can be in our power.

While there are many stories here of pain and trauma, loss and departure, there is also safety. Home as a dream place of safety, as a place that belongs to you. Home as a shore to which we are carried back (John Tinneny's 'Flotsam at Dough'). Home not as the place of trauma, but as a refuge. Home as recovery, and as somewhere you recognise yourself. Finding a home in the trust in others.

Home can also be in our bodies. Some of the pieces draw connections between home as an external place to live and the home we have inside our bodies. The clothes we wear can be home to a moth. Our bodies now or our bodies as they were can be a home, if we are lucky. Sometimes things happen to us that can suddenly make us feel at home in our bodies ('One Day They Landed', by Jennifer Dickinson).

Finally, and perhaps the most enduring feeling found throughout the anthology, there are ideas of home as a shared experience, something that requires others. Maybe a home is the sayings that we remember from our grandmothers ('Simple', by Jude Gray), or the stories we collect from our neighbourhood ('The Forager of Stories', by Toonika Guha).

The Selkie team and the authors have created a gift for their readers: a multiplicity of homes and doorways to linger in.

Christina Neuwirth, Edinburgh, May 2020
Home

Sasha R. Moghimi-Kian

Mina had never really felt at home anywhere. Her family never really stayed any place long enough to settle in, make friends, or even remain in the same school district.

Mostly, Mina thought home might be a feeling, a sort of quiet contentment that was usually all too fleeting.

Home was when it rained and they sat on the porch, under a blanket, while their father read aloud Shamlu, Forough, Rumi, and Hafez.

But it was not the hushed disappointment of her father's voice when she and her sisters had not gotten straight A's that semester, nor the way he insisted that Mina was responsible for her sisters, their grades, their falls, and their faults.

Home was their father when he read Tolstoy and Flaubert as bedtime stories in the room he had painted to match the sky, with wisps of clouds and a hint of sunlight.

Home was when Mina and her sisters pushed aside the living room furniture, spread out white sheets, and pretended to be Olympic figure skaters.

It was in the Florida room that had been converted into a library, where they slept on the floor in the winter to conserve heat.

Home was not hiding in the bedroom, pretending their parents were not fighting again.

Home was not when their mother lied and manipulated and pretended to love them only when there was an audience.

But it was in dancing to the music of Juan Luis Guerra, Selena, Shakira, and Mana. It was in rolling dough to make sopaipillas, in washing herbs for ghormeh-sabzi, setting the haft-seen for No Ruz and putting up the tree for Navidad.

Home was when Mina and her sisters cracked cardamom seeds to brew chai or strained the leaves for yerba mate tea and stayed up the nights before the first day of school to talk about their fears, their hopes, weird teachers, and annoying homework assignments.

It was the days they played on golden sand, blue skies towering over gray seas. The day they discovered the public library. The times they created their own board games because their parents wouldn't buy them real ones. The day they bought their first concert tickets and danced on the lawn to Radiohead.

Home was Tahmineh, Sherazade, and Rudabeh.

It was not home when she and her sisters fought – resentful of being stuck together and never allowed to go anywhere. It was not the way they felt that they were more prisoners of Azkaban than students at Hogwarts, comparing their parents to dementors and wishing they had the magic to vanquish the darkness.

Home was not that December day when Rudabeh slit her wrists and left a trail of blood to the bedroom where she hung herself.

Home was not Mina's father saying, "Are you checking in with Tahmineh and Sherazade? Are you watching over them? Remember you can't let them fall through the cracks – not like what you did with Rudabeh."

Home was not in how her sisters ran away – escaped, fled – leaving Mina to watch over grieving parents with blame in their eyes.

But home was when her sisters came back, when they hugged and cried and laughed.

Home was sitting at Borders, flipping through books and sharing stories of their adventures.

It was when they were finally free enough to sort themselves in Hogwarts houses, teasing and laughing: Mina unsurprisingly a Ravenclaw, Tahmineh begrudgingly a Slytherin, Sherazade happily a Hufflepuff, and Rudabeh – yes, Rudabeh had undoubtedly been a Gryffindor.

Home was when Sherazade became a mother and learned to hope again.

Home was when Tahmineh graduated law school, bought her first car, learned to smile again.

Home was when Mina finally found the courage to write all her stories, and thus learned to dream again.

Home, Mina realized, had never been made of brick and mortar. Home had always been Tahmineh, Sherazade, and Rudabeh. It had been in their hugs, their laughter, and their tears. Home could be any place if she had her sisters.
One Day They Landed

Jennifer Dickinson

The judge asked if I remembered getting the scissors that morning. This was the catch, where my lawyer told me to lie. I did remember getting the scissors because I always kept scissors in my purse.

But I shook my head and rattled my eyes around for good measure. I coughed and stood up straight in my tight, high-heeled shoes, purchased on the way to the courthouse. My mother called them 'taupe' and said they looked good with the linen dress I wore.

My crime was not a felony. The judge referred to it as Trespass and Vandalism. I wouldn't be charged if I sought therapy and worked off my restitution where I'd committed my crime – the mall. This had me giggling as soon as the sentence was announced. My lawyer elbowed me. I could tell I wasn't his type. He tried to engage me in a conversation about the Jaguars and their new season the first time we met. I told him I hated the people who painted their faces and got interviewed on the eleven o'clock news.

"It's not the circus," I said. "It's football."

He shook his head. "I disagree. I really think it's the beauty of the sport. Football brings out the wild side in people."

Football brought out the wild side in my gynecologist. I was scared the first time I saw Dr. Blumentstaff on TV wearing that aqua makeup, sweating thick black streaks beneath his eyes. This was a man who looked inside my vagina for diseases yelling, "I am a Jaguar and I roar! Roar! ROAR!"

When he found out I was a virgin, he was so excited that I thought he might take a picture of me and hang it on the wall, like the orthodontist had done when my braces came off.

Before I began picking up trash at the Westside Mall, I met with a psychologist who suggested at the end of our first session that high school hadn't lived up to my expectations.

"What did you want from high school?" became Dr. Moelle's favorite question.

"I wished I'd been class president," I told. "Or star cheerleader. Lead soprano in the choir. Except I can't sing."

Dr. Moelle wasn't convinced. It was like she could smell my lies.

"Dig deeper, Charlotte. Your answer might unlock your unhappy heart. What did you want from high school?"

I wanted to make passionate love to Avery Donaldson on the white carpet of my bedroom floor, but I couldn't tell her that. My fantasy took hold when Avery announced in the middle of an American Politics discussion about Donald Trump: "Men have always been such fuckwads to women. He's disgusting. What's wrong with us?"

No one at school had ever said anything like this. Kids went to the Mar-a-Lago for Spring Break. Even my parents still had a Trump-Pence sign in our front yard. I thought I was the only liberal person in Florida. I'd never spoken up about my beliefs. I got teased enough because of my curly hair and inability to serve a tennis ball. No one knew I thought Jeff Sessions was the devil. My parents would've taken away my computer if they knew I faithfully watched The Colbert Report. Maybe Avery thought late-term abortion should be covered by health insurance, too. Maybe he was like me: trapped in the sunshine state.

Mr. Phillips told Avery to simmer down. No one agreed with him. Except me. But I was too much of a chicken to speak up. I decided Avery should be my first lover. But how could I make it happen?

My big moment arrived near the end of senior year when we got stuck alone together in a broom closet during a school shooting drill. I could smell his T-shirt – Tide and something else – salt air, maybe. I knew he lived near the beach.

For a few moments, all we did was breathe. I didn't know how to bring up the subject of deflowering me. Maybe I should start by telling him I hated Donald Trump, too. But before I could summon my courage, Avery whispered: "Boo." It was such a surprise I drew in my breath. We both started laughing. I'd never laughed with a boy before. I'd never been that close to a boy before. I'd always thought Avery's hair looked sweet and clean, but now I wanted to bury my face in his armpits. I wanted him to be mine.

I'd only kissed one person in my life – a man in my mother's choir group named Edgar. I even let him put his hand up my shirt, but I refused to touch him. He felt guilty and we ended it after a Christmas concert.

I couldn't work up the nerve in the broom closet. I started sweating. I worried my breath smelled like hot dogs. He asked Hadley Norman-Deville to prom, and I cut up a rack full of prom dresses at the mall. Broke a dressing room mirror, too. It all felt very cathartic.

Dr. Moelle told my parents I should be on suicide watch. I couldn't take aspirin or set the table. A padlock was put on my mother's sewing box.

My parents had their own theories about what had happened. I heard them late at night.

"Clearly we've misunderstood her bookishness, and underneath it she's in a rage."

This was my father talking. He always thought he had the answers because he could solve plumbing problems and do the taxes.

"Yes, and what do you think the dresses symbolize?"

Mother had watched enough Lifetime movies to write one.

Ellen, my nineteen-year-old cousin who was six months pregnant and living in our guest house, suggested I begin smoking cigarettes.

"Charlotte, you need a release. You cut up those dresses because you're stressed out! You wrote too many papers!"

It was true. I had buried myself in work getting straight A's until I was accepted to Northwestern and Stanford. Unfortunately, once the schools heard about what had happened at the mall, they told me I would need to wait a year and reapply. I'd had a chance to get out of Florida and I'd blown it. I was terrified I'd be stuck forever in a place where every May the thick guts of lovebugs coated the windows of our cars. So much so that a woman had careened off I-95 to her death. 'Lovebug apocalypse', the news had called it. What if I died in this hell?

My mother agreed I should take up a vice. Diet Coke, mini-golf, Zumba.

"Not cigarettes, Ellen. I don't want her endangering her health."

Instead I began stealing bras.

The first one was a test, and after that I was hooked. Each afternoon, I changed out of my mall uniform into Ellen's clothes – stuff she wore pre-baby. Jeans and one of a plethora of her country concert T-shirts. I dotted on strawberry-scented lip gloss and straightened my hair, which took nearly an hour because of the rat's nest on my head.

I hit Nordstrom and Macy's first, sneaking into the dressing rooms with a handful of bras, only trying on the ones with gels in the cups that could stand up entirely on their own. In the Juniors department of Macy's, bras had silly patterns on the cups – tanned girls in hula skirts playing ukuleles, grinning monkeys in palm trees. I tore the tags off with my teeth and put the new bras on over my old ones.

Then Eruption opened.

The day they cut the velvet ribbon, I was eating my lunch of orange chicken and Cherry Coke. I heard clapping and walked over to join the crowd of people circling the store. Tucked between Starbucks and Claire's, Eruption was decorated entirely in black and gold. The first day I entered the store, I was greeted by Helga, who wore a nurse's uniform and gave me a card to fill out with my sizes.

The bras were called Quake. On the wall was a picture of the moon and the words written in scrawly white script: 'One Day They Landed'.

I handed Helga the card and she looked at my chest.

"No, dear. You are a 34F."

"I've always been a C."

She handed me a 34F and told me to try it on.

I usually wore a sports bra. In school I wore oversized shirts to conceal the size of my chest, embarrassed in the locker room because my boobs weren't small and perky like everyone else's, tucked inside their tiny cotton bras.

I'd never worn anything with ribbons and lace. The cups were turquoise. The straps were thick and black. Helga yanked open the curtain.

"Bravo, boobies," she smiled and clapped her hands.

My heart leapt as if indeed an earthquake had erupted inside my body.

My stealing days were over. These bras weren't for lovesick high school girls; they were for women who made things happen in their lives. I handed Helga my for-emergencies-only credit card and skipped out of the store.

I was shy at first, only trying on the Quake at night and modeling it for the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. Then one day, Hadley Norman-Deville showed up while I was cleaning off tables in the food court. She sat with another girl who'd been expelled our senior year for selling coke. I didn't notice them until Hadley said hello. I looked up and thought: P.E. Ninth grade. You threw the volleyball at my head. Then you fucked my dream lover.

"Break any mirrors lately?" Hadley asked.

She and her friend dissolved into laughter. I wanted to dump their plates of pizza into their laps. Instead, I left my Windex and paper towels on a table and went to my locker. I took out my purse and went to the bathroom. Inside a stall, I pressed my face into the plastic smell of my new bra and cried, feeling more pathetic than I ever had in my life, even in high school.

I'd told Dr. Moelle I had cut up the dresses because I hated mall culture, but she suggested I did it because I didn't have a date to prom. This was partly true; I'd been forbidden to go to prom because of my Trespass and Vandalism. The night of the dance, I'd lain in bed for hours crying, picturing in graphic detail Avery and Hadley Norman-Deville making love on the carpet of her bedroom.

I pulled off my shirt and changed into the Quake. I immediately felt better. I'd spent so many years wearing ugly sports bras, my arms perpetually crossed. And why? My breasts were pretty. I kissed the tops of them.

I peeked out of the stall and made sure no one was around. Then I admired myself in the mirror, twisting and turning, mimicking the girls in the posters around Eruption. I applied lipstick – one of the many I had swiped from under Mother's sink. I unbuttoned my uniform shirt so that a bit of cleavage showed.

I finished up the afternoon in the food court being eyed by pimply teenaged boys and their fathers. I decided to stop at the grocery store on the way home to buy a container of Chunky Monkey. I wanted to sit in my bed in my bra and eat.

I forgot about my chest until I went through Leonard's line. His eyes went from the pint of ice cream to my face and then down to my boobs.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Fine."

"This is a good flavor."

"I know."

When I got home, Ellen and Mother were making wheatgrass smoothies. The kitchen smelled like horses. I'd spent the last six months watching them become best friends – buying matching fake-silver necklaces at Chico's, making a cottage garden. They gave each other pedicures and talked late into the night about names. Ellen liked Magenta. Mother thought she should be more subtle.

"Name her after something pink."

"Like Cotton Candy?" Ellen had asked.

"Or Rose."

They spent time in the nursery, too, which was so many shades of pink it looked like someone had chugged a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and thrown up.

"How was work?" Mother asked. I'd buttoned up my shirt, so as not to cause alarm.

"Fine."

Still not allowed to venture into the flatware drawer, I asked for a spoon. I opened the pint of ice cream and told them I was going to my room to rest.

"Charlotte, don't let the ice cream melt all over your sheets!" Mother yelled as I walked up the stairs.

I'll do whatever the fuck I want, I thought, remembering how powerful and hot Avery had sounded when speaking his mind that day in class. But instead I said, "Okay, fine."

I returned to Food Party every day in my Quake and a low-cut shirt until Leonard asked me out. I told him I would come over to his house. He had the kind of parents who were always on vacations in the summers that didn't include him. I parked on his street and changed clothes. I applied dark red lipstick and mascara. My hair was still wet from the shower.

I'd barely knocked when he answered. He looked less serious out of his green grocery store uniform. We hugged and he asked if I liked steak.

"You made steak?"

"Yeah," he said. "I like to cook."

We ate on the porch furniture behind his house. We talked about high school and graduating and our plans. He didn't know anyone who went to my school, which immediately put me at ease. Leonard was going up North for college. He'd won a full Entomology scholarship.

"Well, then, I guess you don't mind," I said. "But these mosquitoes are killing me!"

The wine was making me talk like Mother. He brought out Skin So Soft and applied it to my arms.

"You forgot..." I pointed to the tops of my breasts which jumped up from under the shirt.

He gulped.

When he touched me, I shivered. I grabbed him and kissed him long and deep. We moved to the sofa in the living room, forgetting to shut the sliding glass door. I thought about the mosquitoes while we kissed, imagining them taking over the house. When Leonard's parents returned from Brazil, the bugs would be everywhere – stuck to the soap dish, the pans in the sink.

His fingers danced all around my chest until finally I had to take his hands and place them under my shirt.

A few minutes later he asked if he could unhook my bra.

I bolted upright. "But you haven't seen it yet!"

When he looked puzzled, I pulled off my shirt.

"Have you seen anything like this in your whole life?" I asked.

"Wow," he said, tracing the underwire with his finger. "No, I haven't."

I stood up and walked around the living room. I asked him about the deer's head that hung over the mantle.

"That's Wally," he said. "My dad killed him in Colorado."

I grabbed a chair and stood on it to see the deer better.

He said, "Be careful."

I said, "He's cute."

Leonard dared me to French kiss its dusty mouth, so I did. Then I climbed down off the chair and back into his arms.

A week later, he was officially my boyfriend and came over to eat dinner. My parents loved that he wore thick glasses and was going to college. Mother recognized him from Food Party and made jokes about all the bottles of wheatgrass and bags of beets she'd bought since Ellen moved in.

"We're gonna make sure that baby's as healthy as possible," Mother said.

"Be careful," Leonard said. "The child might come out green!"

Everyone laughed. Except me and Ellen, who had recently confessed in a whispered conversation that she wished she'd never gotten pregnant. When I asked her why she didn't get an abortion, she told me to never ask such a disgusting question again.

Leonard confessed after dinner that he was a virgin and wanted me to be his first. We were on the porch waiting for my parents to go to bed so we could make out.

"I mean, I think I love you, Charlotte."

Leonard loved my breasts and I loved the way he looked when he touched them. But that was it. I hated that he liked bugs. I thought it was horrifying that he had drawings of them on his wall and bug skeletons in his closet. He tried to take me to the insect museum, but I told him I couldn't because I had my period. I couldn't even rest my head on him because there were tiny knobs on his shoulder blades. He said his mom called them 'love bumps', but to me they were a deformity, another reason Leonard was all wrong.

But when Leonard touched me, I was liquid fire. Invincible. After scraping gum from under the tables in the food court, his lust was what I needed. So, I agreed to have sex with him. But only if we did it at my high school.

I went back to my school the next morning. Summer school was in session. The campus was completely outdoors, and I knew every hiding place. I went to the science department, then the language department, past all the locker bays, the senior courtyard where I never hung out but dreamed I would someday. That would be the ultimate place. So many times I'd stared at Avery there, wishing I could be with him, my head in his lap while he wound his fingers through my curls.

But the courtyard was too open. If the school employed security guards at night, they'd catch us. And I couldn't risk getting caught and having to spend more time at the mall.

My tour ended where I spent all my seventh-grade lunch periods: in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and remembered my near-crucifixion: I hadn't been able to understand why in Florida, where it rarely dropped below 60 degrees, the girls paraded around in rabbit hides during the winter months. So I had ordered PETA pamphlets of bloody carcasses and hid them in their coat pockets. I had thought that maybe they'd see how wrong it was to wear a helpless animal. That maybe I'd become so popular that I'd run for class president. But that hadn't happened. Word had spread it was me, and there went my chances of ever being invited to beach parties. The girls had written 'ugly loser' on my locker and refused to let me sit beside them in chapel. For the rest of the year, I'd hid in the bathroom to eat my lunch, a stick of vanilla incense pressed to my nose to cover the smell of pee and puke.

It would be the perfect place for me to be deflowered. But what if it was locked?

I stuck a paper clip into the rusty lock. It took me a few minutes, but like everything else at my high school, the lock was old, and I figured out how to get in. I practiced until my time was down to thirty seconds.

We wore black rain ponchos I'd ordered off Amazon over our jeans.

"Charlotte, this feels strange. Couldn't we be charged with breaking and entering?"

Leave it to me to try and get deflowered by a guy whose favorite thing in life besides bugs was Criminal Minds.

But I had something else he loved. I lifted up my poncho to reveal my new Quake – tan, slightly see through with pink flowers.

Leonard shuddered. "Okay."

I let him drive and went over the plan.

"Just follow my lead," I told him. "I have a flashlight, but I only want to use it if absolutely necessary."

I looked down the poncho at my cleavage. My breasts were beautiful. Maybe I would feel beautiful, too, lying underneath Leonard on the cold floor.

When we got to the school, I directed him to a side street a block away.

"We need to be as inconspicuous as possible," I said.

"This isn't very sexy."

"It will be."

The hallways were dark and scary, and the heavy rain reminded me of all the eighties slasher movies Ellen loved so much. I fought the urge to scream as loud as I could, scaring Leonard, my lover who walked behind me. He had a slight case of asthma and I could hear his breath catch in his throat.

When we reached the bathroom door I turned around and whispered: "Leonard, I want you to penetrate me."

"What?"

"I want you to pen-e-trate me."

I stuck the paper clip into the lock. Leonard was breathing hard now.

"Use your inhaler," I said. "It's okay."

It was taking longer than thirty seconds. What if I couldn't do it? Maybe this was completely stupid, and I'd have to do it with Leonard in his bed or in the backseat of my car. It'd be like Mother's favorite movie, Say Anything, and Leonard would shiver in my arms. Yuck.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I don't know if I can do it."

"Let's just go back."

"I'm going to try again."

"Give me a good luck kiss," he said.

I rolled my eyes but let him pull me close. I touched his love bumps. Then I tried again. It worked.

"Score," he said.

He switched on the light and I switched it off.

"No, we can't. Leave the flashlight on. Take off your clothes."

We spread the ponchos down and he immediately pawed at my breasts.

"I'm leaving my bra on," I said. "And my shoes."

"What – why?"

"I saw it in a porno."

"You watch pornos?"

I rolled my eyes and told him to undress. He stripped down to his boxers and I took off my jeans and underwear. I pulled a small bottle of wine from inside my poncho pocket and poured some into my mouth, and then down his bony chest. I licked it off.

"This is wild," he said.

"Take off your glasses."

"But then I won't be able to see you."

I took off his glasses and climbed on top of him, feeling him grow hard underneath me.

"You have condoms?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "But I need to put my glasses back on."

I stared at his back, imagining I was with Avery. How would it have been different with him? For one thing, he wouldn't have been using an inhaler or giggling. He would have grabbed me and pulled me into his arms. With Avery, passion would've overtaken us, and we would've been panting and sweaty by now, the room spinning.

Leonard lowered himself over me. It felt slightly technical as he searched for the right place, first pushing too low and then too high. But then he found the spot – bingo – and I wrapped my legs around him, the taupe heels from my court date rocking back and forth. He squeezed my breasts.

"Do you like it?" he asked as we moved.

"Oh, yes," I moaned, even though it hurt.

Ten seconds later Leonard fell onto me.

"Charlotte," he sighed. "I love you."

I pushed him off and went to the stall and peed. The room wasn't spinning. I wasn't even sweaty. But I did feel different.

"What do you think about abortion?" I asked.

"I used a condom," he said. "Remember?"

"In principle."

"I think it's wrong."

I opened the door. I glared at him with my best glare. "If your baby's inside me, I'm going to get rid of it."

I wanted to shock him, but he just looked nervous. He took a hit off his inhaler.

"Did you hear me?" I asked.

Rain pounded the roof. Leonard put on his clothes and I did, too. We rode through the storm in silence. I felt rageful again, like that day in the dressing room at the mall, the torn fluffy dresses at my feet, the mirror cracked. But this time, I didn't want to cut up or break anything. This time, I wanted to make a plan.

First thing to do: reapply to Northwestern and get the fuck out of Florida.
I Love You Sugarplum

Alexandra Ye

Sugarplum Fairy was a loser – that was why we got him. From his records, you could see that he had only been in three races, and he'd come in last every time. Most of the other greyhounds at the adoption event had retired from much longer careers. Midnight Blaze, for example, was already going gray around the snout. He was a big dog, dark and brindled, and when we took him out of his crate, he lunged forwards towards the grass, yanking my father along behind him.

Sugarplum Fairy wasn't like that. He was much smaller, all white, his thin and elegant legs shaped just like his bones. When we opened the door of the crate, he crept out, brushed his head against my arm and then leaned his entire body against mine. He was heavy and warm and the right height for me to wrap my arms around his neck.

"This one isn't as terrible as the others," said my mother, observing our moment of tenderness. She was distrustful of dogs, as well as the people who adored them. In the park, when we saw people tossing frisbees for their dogs, feeding cookies to their dogs, bending down to scrape up the hot fresh shit of their dogs – Ma would sneer in disgust.

"They are like servants," she would say, sighing in her dramatic Mandarin. "Look at them. White people haven't got their priorities straight."

To Ma, dogs were dirty, degenerate, disease-ridden. Pests, all of them – didn't I remember the street mongrels in Beijing, covered in fleas and scabs, always stealing food, attacking children, humping the elderly at bus stops? I didn't, I was too young when she took me there. All the dogs I did know were like Buddy, my friend Jack's golden retriever. When Jack invited me home with him after school, Buddy would lick him all over. His face, his arms, his hands, his legs. Sometimes Jack even licked him back.

"They're called puppy kisses," I once told Ma. "Buddy gives them to me too."

She shuddered in horror and pushed me into the shower, shouting over the sound of the water: "If you think the dog licks you because it loves you, then I've raised an idiot son! It's an animal. It's licking you to get a taste!"

I cried in the shower that day, my tears doing their part to rinse off the thick film of Buddy's saliva from my face. It was the first time I felt distance between my mother and me, like she would never understand me. Ma didn't know what it was like, feeling Buddy's pure enthusiasm and admiration. She didn't know how special dogs were – they were true friends. And more than anything, I wanted that kind of friendship. Sometimes when Jack was in the bathroom, I pressed my forehead against Buddy's and wondered if I had a deeper connection to him than Jack did. In Buddy's gooey brown eyes, I saw real compassion, real understanding.

For Christmas, for my perfect report card, for my tenth birthday, I asked for a dog. Ma brushed it off – we didn't celebrate Christmas, I was supposed to get all A's, I didn't get presents for my birthday, as she had already given me the greatest present of all, the gift of life. The red envelopes of cash I received for Lunar New Year, she tucked into her purse.

"For your savings account," she said. "When you're a grown man and you don't live with me anymore, you can buy yourself a stupid dog."

My father had other thoughts. I had convinced him with my endless stories about Buddy and Jack.

"This is a matter of cultural difference," he said, while we were eating dinner. "Differences such as: at our house, we take our shoes off at the door and at Jack's house, they leave them on." He placed his chopsticks down on the table. "If we want Kevin to be a real American boy, then Kevin should have a dog."

"These don't sound at all like matters of cultural difference to me," said Ma. "If anything, they sound like gross disparities in cleanliness and hygiene."

"Americans say that dogs are 'man's best friend'."

My father had the job and the degree; he spoke better English and had been in the United States for longer. In this way, it was settled. I was to have a dog. I wanted a puppy that would grow up to be like Buddy, but that wasn't possible. Retrievers were expensive, they shed too much, and puppies were difficult. My mother didn't want a dog with too much energy.

The greyhound rescue was the perfect solution – hypoallergenic, short-haired, and lazy, the dogs were already full-grown, trained, and in need of adoption after the end of their racing careers in Florida. Plus, they were beautiful. The afternoon that we brought Sugarplum Fairy home, we took him for a walk around the neighborhood, all three of us, and it felt like we were driving a very glamorous and expensive sports car down the streets. Sugarplum Fairy slinked alongside us, walking like a runway model in heels. He really belonged in The Nutcracker – he had the neck of a ballet dancer, held gracefully at full extension as he sniffed each fire hydrant. Each time he pissed, he did an arabesque.

"Wow," Jack kept saying, when they met. He caressed Sugarplum's delicate ears, felt his smooth flank, pet his neck. Sugarplum looked at Jack and then tucked his streamlined little head into the fold of my elbow, his tail wagging, all of his weight pressed into me. Now it was Jack who watched me with my dog, his eyes wide with envy and admiration. After I showed him Sugarplum Fairy's racing record, we went online and pored through all of the top times, plus Sugarplum Fairy's family tree.

"He was a real racer," Jack said, even though Sugarplum Fairy was a loser. He was a loser, but you could tell he was bred from excellence. He was built for speed. His sleek body, his ears that pressed down flat behind his head. He was muscular, he had no body fat, he was like some of the women that Jack's mother did yoga with. Compared to Sugarplum Fairy, Buddy was suddenly clumsy, foolish. His mouth always gaping, idiotic, flinging drool everywhere, his tongue dangling around boorishly. His constant eagerness felt exhausting, even a little embarrassing.

Sugarplum Fairy, on the other hand, was the epitome of sophistication. When he lay down, he placed his snout atop crossed paws. Instead of jumping for attention, he would approach and gently touch you with his wet nose. Me, Jack, my father – we attributed Sugarplum's losses on the racetrack to his refined attitude. It would have been uncouth for him to chase after those furry lures, like the other dogs. He was classier than that, he had superior intelligence.

My mother maintained the opposite.

"Look at this stupid dog," she would say, tapping him on the skull with her knuckles. "There's nothing inside here. It's all empty." And Sugarplum would turn away from her, his tail between his legs, but then return as soon as she had any sort of food open in the kitchen. It seemed, at times, that she had a point – Sugarplum Fairy was forgetful. We only managed to teach him how to sit and how to come, never how to shake, roll, or play dead. If you threw a treat up in the air and he didn't catch it in his mouth, he wouldn't be able to find it. I had read that greyhounds had astonishingly sharp eyesight, but Sugarplum wouldn't see or even smell the biscuit on the ground. You had to point a finger between his eyes and then slowly direct his gaze to the treat. But even that, I thought, was pretty special. Hamsters, for example, wouldn't be able to follow your pointed finger anywhere.

Perhaps Sugarplum Fairy was a little slower than other dogs. But, as we learned in school, that wasn't what was most important. More than anything, Sugarplum was kind. He wouldn't have hurt anybody or anything. He was a good dog, and we had a special bond. My father had been right – with Sugarplum Fairy beside me, I experienced a greater sense of normalcy and belonging. I felt special, even. Wherever Sugarplum went, he drew awestruck looks from everybody around him. For the first time in my life, other boys and girls would come up to me and say hello, asking to pet him. My family didn't seem out of place anymore – Sugarplum Fairy had elevated us within the community.

Ma refused to recognize this. All she understood was that he put his nose in dirty places, that his breath smelled bad, that he was stupid. Once, when she left pork to defrost on the counter, and Sugarplum stole it, she kicked him in the ribs. Sugarplum Fairy screamed in pain and stumbled into his crate, cowering and whimpering.

"You're a monster," I said to Ma. "You're an animal abuser."

I was sobbing, a great wave of shame rising inside myself. My own mother, a cruel woman. Jack's mother would never have kicked Buddy or even pushed him in any way.

Ma slapped me on the mouth with one hand and then the other.

"You spoiled little turtle spawn," she said. "I feed that dog every day when you're at school. I pay for its exorbitantly priced topical flea and tick treatments. I bag up its hot wet shits. All so that you can talk to me, your devoted mother, like I'm the dog."

The shame I felt for my mother crumpled into shame for myself. She was right – I'd never had to pick up any of Sugarplum's poop, I always let her do it.

She left the room. My face cooled, my shame dissipating. Anguish solidified into hatred. I resolved to never be like Ma. I would be Sugarplum Fairy's protector – I would love him twice as much. Starting from that day, after everyone had gone to bed, I would sneak downstairs, filling up a glass of water in case my parents asked me why I was up. And then I would hear Sugarplum Fairy's toenails clicking softly towards me. Wrapping my arms around him, I would whisper in his ear how much I loved him.

I told him that I loved him as much as possible. One afternoon, my mother overheard me and called me into the kitchen.

"Dogs don't feel love," she said to me, pushing a heap of turnip tops off of the cutting board with her vegetable cleaver. "They only feel hunger. Never forget that Sugarplum Fairy is an animal, descended from wolves, and that, as useless and pathetic as it is, a thirst for killing runs through its blood."

The turnip tops scattered onto the floor. Sugarplum Fairy leaped out of my arms and scrabbled after them, craning his neck to lick them up. My mother treated Sugarplum like a composter. While I snuck bits of beef under the dinner table to him, she fed him carrot peels, melon rinds, the scabby stems of cabbages.

I folded my empty arms and watched Sugarplum drag his snout across the kitchen floor, searching for more turnip tops. My mother never spoke to him sweetly. She never rubbed his flanks. Usually, she ignored him or shooed him away. But still, he didn't seem to mind. He always sat at her feet in the kitchen, devoted, waiting for something to land on the floor.

I wanted to believe that Sugarplum Fairy despised my mother in the same way that I was coming to despise her. But the truth was, he liked her more than he liked me. He whined constantly if she left the house. When I asked her if he whined for me when I was at school, she snorted. "You're at school every day," she said. "I would have killed him by now if he did."

When her car pulled in, he would dash to the door and press his face against the crack. I began to look at his tail when I came home from school, attempting to precisely measure how fast it was wagging and for how long. For me, he would wag his tail, sniff my hands, and then return to bed. For my mother, he would wag, wiggle, stick his rump in the air, jump from side to side, and then waltz after her into the kitchen. Sometimes he even waited outside the door when she went to the bathroom. The more that I paid attention, the clearer it was: Sugarplum Fairy didn't care about me, despite all my whispering and massaging and petting. He only came to me when I was holding out a piece of meat.

At first, I blamed my mother for this. She must have been poisoning Sugarplum Fairy's mind against me – slipping him slices of pork belly in secret while I was at school, telling him that I was spoiled, that I was turtle spawn. Increasingly, also, I saw my mother as the source of my discontent, the main reason I found it hard to fit in. During a long weekend, Jack's mother called and invited us to bring Sugarplum to the dog park with Buddy. Most of the time, I went to Jack's house after school, or he came to mine, and then we would walk home; our mothers had only ever exchanged pleasantries at school open houses. But we all had to drive to the dog park.

"Make sure Buddy piddles before you start playing with him," Jack's mother said to Jack, even though Buddy was already relieving himself with considerable force upon a fence pole. Sugarplum sniffed around serenely, selecting the choicest spot.

My mother chuckled, even though nothing was funny.

"Sugarplum piss everywhere," she said. "It piss all the time."

A moment passed before Jack's mother was able to animate her face into a smile. I felt sick. My mother was a different person when she had to speak English. It was like she didn't know how to stand up straight. Her face would take on a simpering expression and she would chuckle constantly, as if that could cover up her rude language and bad grammar. I never wanted to acknowledge her when we were in public.

"I suppose that's true," said Jack's mother, forcing a laugh and shaking her head in an artificially rueful manner. She had pinkish white skin and brown hair that curled at the ends. She wore sensible denim capris and a fleece pullover. After Buddy took a shit, she reached into her quilted floral tote to unravel a plastic bag and reward Buddy with a creme-filled dog biscuit.

I looked at my mother, at the old grocery bag that she had stuffed into the pocket of her dirty old sweatpants. She chuckled again and I realized with dismay that I wouldn't be able to run around in the dog park with Sugarplum, Jack, and Buddy. I needed to stick close. I needed to make conversation with Jack's mother so that she didn't think we were bad or uncivil or uneducated people.

I told her about the classes Jack and I had together, about the school play, about our basketball team.

"Come on," Jack shouted from the other side of the field.

"What a smart and pleasant boy you are," said his mother, while Ma stood between us silently. I waved to Jack. He ran back and rummaged through his mother's bag for a tennis ball we could throw to the dogs.

My mother was quiet for the rest of the time, and things were okay. Sugarplum Fairy was much faster than Buddy, but Buddy, being more experienced and more aggressive, was better at guessing where the ball would go and pushing Sugarplum out of the way. I think we all had fun cheering our dogs on. But I noticed that the few times that Sugarplum Fairy managed to catch the ball, he brought it back to my mother, even if I had been the one who had thrown it.

I was sour and sullen during the car ride back home.

"Don't say piss," I said, switching back to Mandarin. "It's rude. Didn't you hear that Jack's mom was saying piddle instead?"

"Why would I say piddle if I could say piss?" said my mother.

"The whole point is avoid saying piss. Piss is vulgar. Piss is frowned upon. Piss is bad."

My mother snorted derisively.

"Piddle," she said. "I've never heard anything so ludicrous. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that these Americans take their pants off just to fart."

"Ma!" I screamed. Why did she have to be so crass? Sugarplum let out a whine from the backseat.

"Don't raise your voice like that," Ma snapped. "You're upsetting Sugarplum."

And then both of us were silent for the rest of the way. I let Sugarplum out of the car when we got home, and he pranced through the front door after my mother without even looking back at me once.

From that day on, I began to resent Sugarplum Fairy. He was my mother's ideal son – he ate whatever she gave him, he groveled at her feet, he didn't ask her annoying questions. If I complained about anything, she would tell me off and send me to my room. And then, from the staircase, I'd watch her settle comfortably back down on the couch, next to Sugarplum Fairy, who would snuggle with her and put his head down on her lap.

I despised both of them. I stopped giving Sugarplum treats. When I came home, I pushed past him and went straight to my room, slamming the door and staying there until dinnertime. When I went to Jack's house, I carefully observed his interactions with Buddy. Their bond was pure, unfettered. Envy again tugged at my heart, as well as hope and desire. Maybe Jack and Buddy had just lived together longer – maybe I just had to be patient, and then the friendship between me and Sugarplum Fairy would blossom.

One night, I couldn't fall asleep, so I went downstairs to get a glass of water. The kitchen was dark, the floor cold against my bare feet. I filled up a glass and drank from it, keeping one hand outstretching into the darkness, waiting for the touch of Sugarplum Fairy's cold and curious nose.

But it didn't come.

Worried, I switched on the light, filling the kitchen with a buzzing noise. I looked past the kitchen door, towards the crate, where Sugarplum Fairy liked to sleep. He was there. All I could see were his two eyes, glowing fluorescent green in the darkness.

I crept towards him, my heart beating fast. His eyes stared back at me. For the first time, I feared Sugarplum Fairy. I couldn't help thinking of all my mother's warnings, how she always said that dogs could turn on you. How Sugarplum, so still, could pounce at any second.

I knelt at the entrance of the crate and placed my shaking hand on his forehead. It was soft and warm. He touched my wrist with his nose – he didn't bite, he didn't snarl. Tenderness and relief flooded back into my heart. I pressed my face against his.

"I love you, Sugarplum," I whispered, my voice pleading for a kiss, for a wag, for any sign that I was special and that he loved me back.

But Sugarplum just sat there and looked at me. He saw right through me, he saw right through what I had said.

God Save

Shivani Sekar

Can't sleep without the grumble and groan

of Vauxhall winter tyres on suburban sludge

chugging through the Monday grit,

and the wet-lipped whistle at 8:06, through

windows that are just-a-smidge open.

Far from that London desperation

leaping through closing doors —

thriving on take-away tinfoil medal

as Getting-To-Work-On-Time is black-holed.

Not the woman who clutches her son's fist

as well as the pole and the briefcase and her

whole world in her palm, who staggers at the stop

and speaks to him in foreign, and minds the gap.

Those that stand on the right, their yellow socks

winking from under pinstripe hems —

the scribble of a toddler's pen smuggled under

cuff-linked shirtsleeves when crossing the Thames.

Butter on both burnt sides so it always falls wrong,

and an Earl Grey to go — in an eternal hurry

and everyone better know. The trenchcoats

with their umbrellas in Roman shield formation,

always behind the yellow line and never on time.

And I can't sleep without the drip

of yellow residential light down my windowsill at 2:05,

once semi-detached children have shut their blinds

and all is quiet for another night.
White

Nathan Pascu

You're jogging when you meet her. A dull, rainy morning, just like all the others, during which the world around you seems to be moving in slow motion. Each movement of the dark green leaves in the trees, each gust of wind that keeps them from settling back into their proper place, each puff from those tiny yellow flowers floating around and around, never quite concluding their descent, each tiny movement of the space that you move through gives way to a thousand ideas branching out in your mind. Some are here, in the front – loud and insistent and important – and some are more distant – soft voices heard from somewhere in the back, in the deep recesses of that seemingly endless void that houses them all. It should be overwhelming, but it's not because you have your music. Your tiny black headphones sit snugly in your ears, filling the space between them with soothing waves of sound. The same song you heard for the first time two days ago and fell in love with plays on repeat, perhaps at a volume too loud to be healthy, but that doesn't matter. The music is a constant, just loud enough to drown out the anxiety and stress that come with all the chaos in your brain. It allows you to go into a state of being, yet not being here. It loosens the tension in your shoulders, helps you keep your jaw unclenched, lets you pass from thought to thought with calm and ease. You are at peace.

And then, because you're too busy thinking about how much you love this song and wondering how long it will take you to get sick of it, while also hoping that you'll build some muscle soon or else the jogging and working out is useless, and making a list of things you need to buy next time you go grocery shopping, and mentally writing down dialogue for one of your dozens of unfinished novels, you crash into someone. The impact is so strong that you lose balance and fall backwards, your headphones falling out of your ears and clattering to the pavement, touching the dirty ground, and your senses get assaulted and overwhelmed by all these sudden changes. But most of all, you feel embarrassed and anxious and so, so sorry because you possibly injured a nice-looking young woman (and by nice-looking, you mean that she looks like a nice person, but also that she is physically beautiful).

You're still trying to process everything and get over the flaring heat of pain in your lower back (and your butt, but that doesn't hurt as much anymore) when she's already gotten back up, dusted herself off, and is extending a hand to help you get off the ground. You see her hand first: long and slender fingers; delicate, yet there's a certain strength to them. You know she'll easily hoist you up even before you reach your hand to meet her firm grip. You remember your headphones, grab them quickly, and shove them in your pocket (you'll clean them later). At ground level, you see a pair of white running shoes, quite worn, most likely well-loved – even though they have many signs of wear, they're still as white as the milky sky that gave you a headache this morning. It's probably not fair to compare them to that, since they look like perfectly nice shoes and haven't done anything wrong, but that's the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of the color. As you're dragging your eyes back up, you notice a pair of grey sweatpants – similar to yours, but you think they're more like yoga pants because they're less baggy and seem thinner. A white tank top is half tucked, with a gray jacket wrapped over it around the waist, and for a moment you wonder how this woman could possibly be outside without her jacket on, even while running, because March is not a month of mild temperatures and sunny days. March is the battlefield of winter and spring, the former clinging on for any more time it can get, the latter wanting to claim her birthright and take down the grumpy old geezer sitting atop his icy throne. March and November are the worst months, with headaches brought on by milky skies, sleepless nights caused by the drudgery of responsibilities, and the change in seasons, with aching bones made so by the near-constant rainfall and pressure.

But as you touch her hand, something clicks into place and you look up right into her eyes, not without seeing the soft, amused smile that rests on her face. Her eyes are green and blue and kind, and so beautiful that for a moment you're simply mesmerized before you remember your manners and anxiety pulls at your chest.

"I'm really sorry. I should've been more careful – I wasn't looking, I had my headphones –" you start apologizing, the never-ending string of explanations already on the tip of your tongue, like a battalion ready to be unleashed upon the wounded, to make your apology make sense, to bring about the certainty of understanding. She stops your tirade with a soft shake of her head, squeezing your hand in reassurance. You didn't realize you were still holding hands. You feel awkward. She seems to pick up on it because she lets go, though does so slowly, purposefully, not as if she's disgusted or uncomfortable with holding hands with a stranger, but because she doesn't want you to feel distressed. Everything she does seems so effortless, so relaxed; like it's easy for her to do it, like she doesn't need repeating music in her ears like you do to keep yourself from saying your thoughts out loud while outside on your daily morning routine.

Her eyes look like the park feels on a sunny morning of a spring day, with dew falling off baby leaves, tiny branches croaking with the effort of keeping up with the soft wind, nature basking in the calm blue of the sky, warmed up by the sunlight. Growing and building up strength for the seasons to come, living, breathing, in that one moment in which everything feels as if it became still, as if it could be immortalized in one of the millions of paintings of parks and trees, of nature in spring, with blooming flowers and individually painted blades of grass. But the truth is that no painting could do justice to the light that seeps into your bones, the sharp air that invigorates your lungs. And no string of thoughts or associations could put into words the feeling you get, the potential of all that she is and all that she could be, just from staring into her green-blue eyes.

"It's okay, no need to apologize. I'm sorry, too. I wasn't paying too much attention, either," she says with an easy shrug, like it really is no big deal that she collided with someone and sent them sprawling to the ground. You smile then, too, because her grin is infectious and you can't help it, and also because you have no idea how to look away from her eyes; those eyes which hold so much time and life and something inside, something that connects with you, with a you that's floating in your core. Those eyes and that smile (and that blinding white tank top which leaves her toned arms on display) make you feel so out of sorts, yet so comfortable at the same time, that you say something completely out of character (something that keeps you up for many hours later that night as you try to understand just where that bravery could have possibly come from).

"Still," you begin with a completely steady voice, as if you've done this a dozen times before, "will you let me make it up to you with a coffee – or tea, um, or juice? Whatever it is you drink." And okay, maybe the rambling part does sound a lot more like you, but it's still a miracle that you asked out a complete stranger (you don't even know her name!). And if things weren't surprising enough already, the woman nods a few times, her smile getting bigger with each movement of her head. Someone saying yes to going out with you? You must've hit your head harder than you realized.

You don't get to wonder that much at your luck because she grabs your arm and starts dragging you off down the narrow path she was coming from.

"Come on, I know a great place that has some amazing tea, and it's not far from here!"

You follow along dumbly, unable to do more than hum your approval, but that must be the right response because she pauses in her excited half-walk, half-jog, and turns to beam at you.

The café is small – just a few round wooden tables, uncomfortable stools with worn leather cushions – and yet it feels nice. Intimate. Like the sort of hidden-away place that's someone's go-to spot when they're sad or when they just want some peace and quiet away from the gravity of their life. Jazzy covers of popular songs play softly in the background, while the air is filled with the intoxicating aroma of ground coffee beans and chocolate croissants. After you order a green tea and a piece of apple pie – she orders sweet black tea and a strawberry cupcake – you take a seat at a table right next to the window, the farthest from the entrance. After staring out through the fogged-up glass for a few moments, basking in the dramatic feeling of it (like you're in a sad music video, soft arpeggios in a minor key accompanying the tune of your thoughts), you turn to ask her something. You're not sure what you're about to ask, and you never find out because she speaks first.

"This table is the best. It's got a view, see?" She points at the source of your half-melancholic mood. "But really, the reason I like it best is because it's far from the front door. In an hour or so, more people will come in before work to get some coffee to go and the like. It can get really drafty up there." She nods her head towards the counter, where the barista is preparing your order and bobbing her head (with her blonde ponytail swishing rhythmically) along with the music.

"I wouldn't want to be working behind that counter then. I'm terrible with drafts; my immune system is very shitty," you say quite seriously, and she laughs. Your mouth curls up into that kind of half-smile then, when you realize you've said something funny but don't want to appear too amused by your own joke, while you're also secretly pleased that someone else found your words worthy of a laugh.

She looks at you then, points at your mouth (or your lower face, anyway) and nods. She also bites her lip in a way that might have seemed flirty if it was aimed at anyone else, but you are under no such illusions; you only observe the expression so that you can think about it later when you're back home and agonizing over it, overanalyzing every interaction, imagining a different world where someone flirting with you would be a real possibility, thinking up the sort of things you could say or do in response.

"I like that smile," she says, mirroring yours with a big, unreserved smile of her own, one of the half dozen or so that she's already aimed at you since you bumped into each other.

"Thanks." You look away for a moment and fumble with your fingers in your lap, unsure of how to respond. "Yours is really nice, too. It's, um, very open," you try, stumbling a bit, but you're overall satisfied that you were able to take a compliment somewhat gracefully.

"Yeah, I try to be an open book," she offers casually, like it's not weird to use such a cliché statement.

"What do you mean, open book?" You frown, trying to figure out if she was perhaps being sarcastic in that deadpan way and you just weren't able to pick up on it.

"Well, I mean..." She scratches her right arm while searching for the right explanation, then shakes her head. "I don't know, I guess I just don't want to waste any time smiling at people I don't like, and hiding the smiles from the people I do like." She shrugs, and pauses for a few moments to look out the window. She can't really see much of anything at this point, as the heat of your bodies has fogged it up even more, but you understand she needs a bit more time, so you wait. "So now I'm just trying to live that kind of open life, tell people how I really feel, when I feel it."

You know there's more to it than that, but it's probably not a subject light enough for a first meeting. "The kind of life that has you agreeing to go for a drink with a stranger after they collide with you on your morning run?" you say with a half-smile, this time expecting the soft laugh that comes out of her mouth.

"Yes, exactly that kind."

It's either a coincidence, or the barista has a great ear and even better timing, because just as you finish this 'revealing-a-part-of-myself-without-really-saying-much' conversation, the blonde makes her way to your table and places your hot beverages and pastries in front of you. You both thank her at the same time (you're pleasantly surprised to see that your stranger isn't the type of person to yell "Jinx!" when that happens), and she tells you not to worry about it and that if you need anything else to just ask. You never understood why people answer 'don't worry about it' when someone thanks them. 'You're welcome' makes sense, and so does 'no problem'. But what would you be worrying about when thanking someone?

You remember that you're not supposed to start thinking about random life things while you're in someone's company, so you blink a few times and straighten your face from that contemplative frown that it had fallen into. She gets an inquisitive look but doesn't say anything, and sips at her tea instead. You know better than to do that because you will most definitely burn your tongue. Maybe she has a less sensitive tongue, or maybe she just likes to abuse her taste buds, but you've mastered the art of tea drinking over the years, and you know that you have to wait at least five to seven minutes before you try to take a sip. You take a couple of bites from your apple pie instead and hum as you're chewing.

"This is really good," you say, pointing towards your plate. You don't really know why you're using those exact words and pointing like that at your food, as if you're in one of those movies or TV shows, but you really do think that the pie is good, and for some reason, that's the only way you could think of phrasing it. You hope it doesn't seem as strange to her, and that it doesn't make her immediately think of all the scenes she must've watched with characters saying that exact line in that exact same way.

"It is. All their pastries are, because they make them right here," she says, emphasizing her last two words by tapping the table with her pointer finger, and if she thought of the same thing as you did, she certainly doesn't look like it. You focus on the tapping of her fingers, and you try not to think too much about how her response sounds like it's straight out of a movie, too. Maybe you're reading too much into it; most people watch a ton of movies in their lives, so they'll obviously pick up some mannerisms, at least. Was her answer an accident? Is she just playing along with whatever you say? Just for a moment you become alarmed, thinking that you might be sharing a table with a serial killer. But then you remember that you don't really care either way, and she seems really nice, and you're not that easy to fool. You have a feeling about people, you know them, you know what they're capable of, and this woman is definitely not the killing type.

"What were you thinking of just then?"

"Whether or not you're a serial killer."

"That's fair," she concedes and finally takes a bite of her pink cupcake. "So, what's your verdict?"

"Not guilty." Your fist hits the table softly and you make that half-smile, half-smirk again, then cover your mouth with your hand; you can't believe you let yourself say that out loud.

Apparently, neither can she, because she bursts out in a boisterous laugh, head tipped back and all (boisterous, boisterous... raucous, carefree, loud. Where do you even know that word from? Who describes someone's laughter as boisterous in real life? Clearly, you've read too many stories; their superfluous vocabulary slips in between your usual words, fitting itself into sentences and making them sound strange even to your ears). You would be proud of your joke under other circumstances, but this was honestly one of the lamest things you've ever said, so instead, you're even more intrigued by this person who just appeared in your life out of nowhere, bringing the type of sunshine you've been missing ever since... well, forever, probably. You wish she was able to bring physical sunlight, too, but you doubt you'd be that lucky; what are the chances that someone you meet would also have some sort of supernatural weather-controlling powers?

"Well, what about you? How do I know you're not a serial killer?"

You ponder for a moment in the most exaggerated way possible, with narrowed eyes, pouting lips, and fingers scratching at your chin. "I guess you'll have to trust me," you say with a straight face, your best imitation of that secret agent character you liked in the show with the machine and the government and the dog.

"I guess I will," she answers without missing a beat. She can't possibly know the exact character you were thinking of, but she got the joke, so it's all good. It would have been kind of awkward if she didn't.

Your feet stumble on the old plush carpet, and you curse your clumsiness for just a moment, but it doesn't really matter at this point. You're way too caught up in the fire coursing through your veins, each touch feeding it further, making shivers turn into a warm white, filling the imperceptible space between your bodies. A few feet further, you think she stumbles, too; you can't be sure, and frankly, you don't care, not while you're feeling more alive, more grounded than you've ever felt since you were born, and yet, somehow floating in the middle of everything and nothing. Treasured moments of peace during which your mind is blissfully silent, focusing on making your body feel everything that your soul does. An inevitable conclusion, but one you've been waiting for ever since you arrived here.

You could say that you didn't know where it was all going, where your path was taking you. You could, but why lie to yourself? You always knew you were meant for something else, somewhere else, where things are different, where people are and feel different. You've always known, but you could never put it into words. And yet, somewhere along the way, the world started changing, started remembering what it really was. You could tell because of the way she looked at you, because of how she trusted you within minutes of meeting you. You know she felt it, too. That connection. That invisible thread holding you, holding her, holding us all together even while we're apart.

You reach the bed, falling on it ungraciously, in that carefree manner in which people do when they get home after a long day and collapse, exhausted; in that tempo filled with urgency, when they take someone for the first time; in that expectant, yet comfortable way, when they've been together all their lives. You touch each other, and your world materializes once again.

Your vision fades to black, and then to white. You are in a field of lines, sketched into infinity, threads of energy extending past the barriers of time or space. You are in a place that is not a place at all, but the very home of life. You are all here; you know because you can feel everyone moving around, shaping the world as they go. You can feel the thread between you. You need only need them, and they will be here. For now, you breathe.

A silver bench takes shape to your right; you take a seat. Then a purple lamppost across from you, next to the small, white ornamental bridge you're sketching, which leads to rows of maroon houses blending together into the line of the horizon, shapeless until you're near them and your needs are clear. You decide you're in a park, and trees sprout up from the just-now forming dirt and grass, the faded green an interesting contrast to the white bridge and the purple lamppost. A few fireflies appear almost unbidden because you felt like looking at the stars, and suddenly there's a sky, that perfect shade of dark blue, speckled with glittering lives. You walk across the bridge, taking in the baroque ornaments forming under your ethereal hand as it hovers over the balustrade. Your house becomes more tangible as you approach, sketched corners morphing into curved edges; half-moon windows growing into their place on the walls; a round, black doorknob popping out of the white door – the shiniest metal you've ever seen. You reach out your hand and for just a moment, it's human. You turn the knob and open the door. Everyone is waiting inside.

You are home.
The Golden Mean

Luciana Erregue-Sacchi

I brought apricots, bread and cheese

in a clear bag: the same fruit

Hercules was ordered to pick

for the eleventh of his twelve labours.

You thought it was a sophisticated spread

and told me "back home, apricots are smaller

but tastier," as you took a first bite

of the acidic fruit whose nectar dripped

all the way to the rim of my cup.

I told you about the fragrant apricots

my grandfather used to buy at the market.

He would display the fruit on a bed of newspapers

on our aqua Formica kitchen table, the one with the uneven legs,

and as the fruit came tumbling down

he exclaimed, "apricots ripened faster back then!"

"I have no patience for nature," I told you.

"You are always so quiet," you told me.

I found it easier to let you do the talking

while my apricot ripened, taking delight

in the Golden Mean of silence:

a precious offer of opaque waste,

drawn to trick the most cunning translator

in the knowledge there is still a golden apricot

like the ones back home, inside my throat.
Left

Ely Percy

Harpreet's movin tae England. Her ma an da huv solt the post office an thir buyin this restaurant in a place called Penrith up by the Lake District. Harpreet an Navdeep don't want tae go. Navdeep says thir pure tryin tae ruin her life; she says as soon as she turns sixteen, she'll jist move back up here an apply fur a hoose aff the council.

Thir leavin in three days. Harpreet said her da tolt them aboot a month ago but made them promise no tae say anythin tae anywan. Ah went roon tae see her after school the day; thir's nothin left in her room noo cause she's got aw her stuff, apart fae whit she needs fur school, aw packed intae cardboard boxes so that she's ready fur the removal van.

Ah said, ah cannae believe this is happenin. She said, Ah know. Ah said, Ah'm pure guttet. She said, Yeah, ah know. Aye right, ah said, You'll go away tae a new school an meet new pals an yi'll pure forget aw aboot me. No ah won't, she said. Aye right. Kirsty, she said, Ah promise yi yi'll always be ma best friend. Well, ah said, When am ah ever gaunnae get tae see yi. Yi can come down an visit me at the weekends an school holidays an stuff, she said. Yir forgettin ma da disnae have a motor, ah said. Well, mine does. Aye, an he's also got a restaurant tae run. Well, said Harpreet, We can still write.

***

Harpreet left at eight a'clock this mornin, an ah had school as well, so ah never even got tae see her off. It wis pure weird walkin intae Regi an her no bein there, especially when Mr Morris said her name an Charlene shoutet, SHE'S LEFT, lik it wis nae big deal, lik she wis jist away tae the toilet or somethin.

***

Ah used tae have this pal in primary school called Patricia Cushion (evrubdy always called her Pat-Yir-Cushion behind her back cause she wis always touchin her hair, an her ma wis Pat-Yir-Cushion-the-second cause she wis jist as bad). She used tae live across the backdoor fae us, but then she moved hoose when we wur in aboot primary five or six. We used tae write letters tae each other an stuff nearly every day. It wis pure stupit cause she only moved tae Paisley, an it wid only've taen fifteen minutes tae get tae her hoose on the bus, but we wur quite young at the time ah suppose, an it seemed lik it wis a million miles away.

Ah still got a letter fae her every couple a months an she's invitet me tae her thirteenth birthday party in March, but ah'm no gaunnae go cause she's pure changed: she's got a boyfriend noo who's nearly sixteen an she does rude stuff wi him an she's always talkin aboot it. She keeps tryin tae get me tae go on a double date wi his pal, but it's jist no ma scene.

***

Charlene come doon, at interval, tae help in the tuckshop in place ae Harpreet, but aw she did wis knock aw the Midget Gems an the jelly rings, an in the end up, Mrs Auldhill flung her oot an tolt her no tae come back.

***

Ah want tae go tae the swimmin baths, but ah've got naebdy tae go wi. Ma ma said, Whit aboot aw yir pals fae school? Whit pals? Whit aboot the wee lassie Kyle or yir pal Christopher, wid they no go? Don't think so somehow, ah said. Their aw dead good swimmers they widnae want tae go wi me. Well, whit aboot Charlene? Ah jist tuttet. Listen hen, ma Ma said, We aw know yi miss Harpreet, but that's jist life. She said, Surely yiv got other pals left that yi can go aboot wi?

***

Ah sat doon an wrote a letter tae Harpreet. Ah wrote it on ma new Winnie the Pooh writin set that ah got fur Christmas that ah've never used. Ah went an gave her wan ae the white bits ae paper wi the purple border that's got a wee Eeyore doon the bottom corner. Eeyore's ma favourite character fae Winnie the Pooh, even if he is the maist depressin.

***

It's been nearly a week an Harpreet's still no wrote back. Ma ma said gie her time she'll still be tryin tae get settled in. Ah keep wonderin whit her new hoose is like an whit the folk in her class are like. Whit if she disnae write back? Whit if the next time ah see her, she's turnt intae another Pat-Yir-Cushion?

***

Two weeks an she still hasnae replied. Ah thought she wis meant tae be ma best pal.

***

Ah finally got a letter back fae Harpreet the day; it said:

Dearest Kirsty,

Thanks for yir letter. Yil never believe what just happent tae me... Ah just startet writin yi this letter when a huge bee – no exaggeration – came flyin through ma window unannounced. Then... it began attackin me for absolutely no reason... can yi believe it... the rudeness of insects today! Well ah gave it a deadly swot with the paper that am writin tae yi on... feelin very brave an pleased with myself now, havin just killed a dinosaur-sized bee. Now if yi feel like comparin me to William Wallace an hummin our national anthem, ah will be even more chuffed.

By the way, how do yi manage to write on blank paper without yir writin goin all squinty? Ah've tried to but cannot seem to do it in a straight line. This paper ah'm writin tae yi on is supposed tae be for ma R.E. project but... he'll never know.

School here is o.k. but ah wish ah wis back in Scotland. Write soon.

Yir best friend in the whole universe,

Harpreet Keeshan Kaur

***

Yvonne Brookmyre got made tae be ma partner in English cause we wur tae work in twos an we baith had naebdy tae go wi. We'd tae dae this thing where one ae yi has tae pretend yir an alien fae another planet an yiv got a pen pal on planet Earth; Yvonne went the alien an she had tae write a letter full ae questions that sumdy who had never been tae Earth might write, an then ah had tae dae a reply.

It wis pure funny cause Yvonne's a wee toty lassie who's dead shy – ah've only spoke tae her aboot twice the whole time wuv been in first year, an that wis only tae ask fur a len ae her sharpener – but she described hersel in the letters as bein seven foot tall wi a mooth the size ae a human foot, an she wis askin questions lik, Dis your father wear a skirt (as in a kilt). Me an Yvonne couldnae stop laughin aw afternoon, an we wur walkin aboot wi big cheesers on wur faces.

***

At lunchtime, Charlene went tae Tesco wi Laura Kyle; ah didnae fancy it cause ever since that time Charlene got caught shopliftin, they make yi go in two at a time, an that meant wan ae us wid have tae go in by wursel, an ah knew it wid be me. Ah wis gaunnae jist go an sit ootside the tucky wi ma packed lunch till it opent up, but then Yvonne seen me an asked if ah wantet tae go ower tae her hoose.

***

Ah wrote another letter tae Harpreet this afternoon an ah tolt her aw aboot whit's been happenin in school: ah tolt her aboot Charlene knockin oot the tucky, an how she's still stalkin Wully McCoy; ah even tolt her aboot how Sammy Campbell wis gettin questioned by the polis cause ae that thing at Christmastime where sumdy put a roll a Sellatape doon the Royal Mail post box an took aw the money oot the Christmas cards. Ah didnae tell her aboot me bein partners wi Yvonne in English though, or aboot me gaun tae her hoose fur lunch. Ah don't know why ah didnae tell her cause it wisnae really a big deal.

Ah just didnae want Harpreet tae feel left oot.
The Forager of Stories

Toonika Guha

Most of the houses in Joba Lane shared walls. Nobody knew how old they were, but the crumbling facades and hanging banyan roots in some of the crevices made it evident that it had been a while since the walls were erected.

On hot, sticky summer afternoons in Kolkata, as the walls clung to each other for support, the sunburnt rooftops would be crowded with rows of bamboo mats. Each morning, the old women would come up to lay out slices of raw mango marinated in chilli, lemon, and spices to dry upon the mats. The interconnecting roofs shone like a field of yellow as the occupants of Joba Lane settled down for their bhaatghoom1 .

At around 3:30 p.m., the old women would make their way back up to the roof to put away the pickle for the day. As soon as the clock struck 4:00 p.m., the interconnected roof would become overrun by the children of the neighbourhood.

***

Nandu was the star mathematician of the neighbourhood. He was the envy of every Bengali mother in the locality; not only would he always come first in class, but he was also the para's resident cricket prodigy. At the age of eleven, he could hit a six like none other and was highly sought after during the annual inter-para cricket match. Joba Lane had remained the winning team for two years, thanks to Nandu's skill. They came close to losing the tournament the prior year, as the final match was the day before Nandu's maths exam. The entire team (and their families) descended upon Nandu's house to convince his mother to let him play in order to protect the para's honour. In the end, Shila-kakima conceded. Nandu outdid himself on the field that day and came home upon the shoulders of his jubilant teammates. A week later, his exam results were announced: he had topped the class yet again. Suddenly, he fell from grace in the eyes of his teammates, as their mothers began to chide them for not being more like him.

Nandu had a close circle of friends with whom he played cricket every day on the large expanse of a roof that the houses of Joba Lane joined to form. Ratan was both his closest aide and his favourite, the reason for which had very little to do with Ratan himself and a lot to do with Ratan's family. As the son of a gold merchant, Ratan's house was the only one with a landline telephone, something seemingly magical during the late nineties when Narasimha Rao had just exposed India to globalisation. Nandu's father was a man who struggled to keep his grocery shop afloat. Under these circumstances, Nandu enjoyed hanging out with Ratan, who shared his video games and foreign chocolates with him.

Nandu's sister, Madhobi, never understood the fuss about the cricket matches, nor did she care about video games. The chocolates were delicious, but she decided that she could do without them. A few years younger than Nandu, Madhobi was seven and a bit of a loner; while the other children played in groups upon the expansive roof, she would sit in a corner and observe their games – or at least that's what they thought she did.

In reality, Madhobi would walk around the neighbourhood, foraging for stories. The connected roof allowed one to walk to all the houses in the para. This worked to her advantage, as she could walk all around the neighbourhood, listening to the stories of all its occupants.

***

During the summers, when the para was drowsy from the afternoon naps, no one in the family would notice as Madhobi slipped away to forage for stories. Her favourite spot on the giant roof was a mossy corner between the Chatterjee and Roy houses; in this unique spot, she would sit for hours, looking into a small goldsmith's workshop that was run by old Tarok-babu. Tarok-babu had a rickety, old, and bony body that he folded onto his bamboo mat as he sat by a low flame, beating and shaping gold ornaments. His assistant, the young and lanky Gopal, would run around the shop, cleaning, gathering water, and running errands for the old man.

While Tarok-babu always seemed hard at work, Madhobi barely ever saw any customers go in or out of his little workshop. Occasionally, the women of the neighbourhood would come to the shop with snippets of newspaper cuttings, inquiring about the cost of ornaments that would be shaped as per the delicate designs on the pieces of paper that they brought with them. They would stay for hours, fussing over the shapes, cuts, designs, and, most importantly, the rates. Tarok-babu always looked exhausted after these conversations, which left Madhobi very curious about the ornaments the women had ordered. Sometimes she would abandon her perch and come down to the shop to watch Tarok-babu work; she would walk about the store, inspecting each element, as Gopal would whirl about wildly, warning her not to touch anything. She didn't like Gopal much. She was only looking for stories. Why did he care so much?

During the festival of Dussera, when the whole city was lit up with bright lights to celebrate the festival of Durga Pujo, Madhobi would sit on the roof and watch the dandiya2 festivities that took place every year on the roof of the Shah house. The Shahs were the only Gujarati family in the neighbourhood, and every autumn their whole family would ascend to their roof to dance to the tune of Bollywood music and (what looked like to Madhobi) a hundred sticks. As they twirled and danced under the floodlights, wearing sparkling costumes, her eyes would glisten, wishing to join them, but the Shahs were the owners of the biggest grocery store in the area, which proved to be competition to Madhobi's family's store. And it was because of this family rivalry that she was not allowed to go to their house to participate in the festivities.

The mid-nineties in Kolkata were probably less warm and humid than today, owing to climate change, but they surely were less comfortable due to the frequent power cuts. The electricity would come and go at its own pace, especially during the summer months, but people weren't as antsy about the omnipresence of air conditioners back then as they are today. As soon as the lights would go off, children and adults alike would flock to the roofs, hoping to catch a breeze. Different groups would sit together to enjoy an evening under the moonlight. While some indulged in good old fashioned antakshari, others would huddle together near a hurricane lantern to listen to ghost stories. Madhobi loved these evenings and would flit from group to group, listening to the various tales.

She loved the ghost stories that Mithu's grandmother told by the light of the lantern. As the old lady narrated the story of a faceless boy upon a bridge in Lucknow, Madhobi would stare into the darkness, imagining featureless faces swimming in the damp Bengal air. As she would drift off to sleep later at night, she'd quickly shut her eyes, hoping that the ghosts from her imagining wouldn't manifest in front of her.

On quieter winter afternoons, when the maids of the neighbourhood would come up to the roof to sun themselves, Madhobi would sit in their midst, listening to their stories about homes in villages far and near. Most of the women had come from villages in Bihar or Bangladesh to Kolkata to seek their fortunes. Some lived full-time at their employers' homes, while others lived with their husbands and children in nearby houses. The quiet afternoons would come to life with the voices of the maids, as they braided each other's hair, complaining of various things. Some gossiped about their employers, others talked about their husbands. Some even talked about their disobedient teenage children who refused to stay in school. Sitting amongst the maids, Madhobi would absorb their stories.

***

The stories that she heard and absorbed every day may not have been very useful to anyone else, but to Madhobi, they were invaluable. They whirled and swirled inside her head when she would lie in her makeshift tent she sometimes set up on the roof. This was only possible in the winters though, when her mother would put the heavy kombol3 out to sun. She would hang one end from the low walls of the roof and lay the other end on a bamboo mat on the floor. She would then crawl into the space inside and bask in the filtered sunlight that came through. The world inside the little tent would swim and come to life with the myriad stories in her head. This small tent on winter afternoons felt like home to this little girl.

As she would lie in her makeshift tent, Madhobi would think about how much she loved Joba Lane. The narrow paths, the walls of the houses, plastered with posters of Bengali films, and, most of all, the giant expanse of a roof.

I shall never leave Joba Lane, she would often think to herself.

***

As the Indian economy began to change with liberalisation, so did the para. Anything that anyone did there was incomplete without an announcement to the whole neighbourhood. Of course, the whispers, facilitated by the network of maids, always followed before any formal announcements.

On a rainy monsoon afternoon, whispers began to fly that the Shahs were moving out of the para. Apparently, they were starting a new business on the other side of town and wanted to move to be closer to it. Many generations of Shahs had lived in the neighbourhood where they had grown a small vegetable shop in order to become the giant store that caused Madhobi's father to scramble for customers. But now that the Shahs had made their fortune, the whispers said they would be moving to a more affluent part of town. The whispers delighted Madhobi's father, as he felt his shop would finally receive the attention it deserved.

Soon enough, Mrs Shah made rounds across the neighbourhood, inviting everyone to the opening of the new store across town. It was to be something she referred to as a 'supermarket', a term that only Ratan and his sisters had heard before, courtesy of the American TV shows they would watch on the large VCR tapes their father bought them.

The Shahs' new shop was to open in a month's time, and they were set to move within a few weeks. While Madhobi's father was delighted, Nandu was sad to see his playmates leave. As they packed up their things, trucks would come now and then to pick up their boxes and take them to their new home. Manju, their maid, who travelled back and forth between their two houses, reported to her friends on the roof that the new house was like a palace. It even had a telephone that operated without wires!

As Madhobi watched the trucks come and go from a spot on the roof, she wondered what it would be like to move out of Joba Lane. She couldn't imagine a life without the lively evenings on the roof during Dussera. Would the Shahs find another neighbourhood where they would make new friends? Would they all flock to the roof when the electricity was gone?

What dull evenings were in store for them, she wondered.

***

Madhobi's father's happiness was short-lived, for when the Shahs moved away, they had sold their shop to an upcoming chain of grocery stores that were already established all across Kolkata. The store, Roj-gere-ginni, had an inventory far vaster than anything the residents of Joba Lane had seen before. The gleaming, white shelves were filled with rows upon rows of imported chocolates and cookies; the pickle section had more jars than anyone in Joba Lane had ever laid their eyes on. Not to mention a giant refrigerator that, for the first time, sold cold meat in the area.

People flocked to see the shiny new interiors on the day the store opened for business. Mahesh, the manager, quickly became a crowd favourite; he would often stand at the entrance of the shop, hawking its wares and drawing in customers. He would also provide an extra discount to those who would spend time chatting with him. These discounts, coupled with his charming personality and the fact that Roj-gere-ginni always stocked the best products, once again meant that Madhobi's father's clientele began to dwindle. In fact, some of his loyalists even began to drift to the new store.

***

That year, as the days became shorter and there was a slight nip in the air, Madhobi's mother began to pack their things. Nandu felt the excitement rising in his chest as he wondered if they were going on a family trip. Perhaps it was time for their yearly pilgrimage to Darjeeling. Or maybe this time they would go to Puri; a classmate at his school had been there recently, and it sounded like a lot of fun!

However, he soon began to notice that his mother was also packing things like the kitchen utensils and the framed photos that hung on the wall. Surely, a hotel in Darjeeling or Puri would have their own utensils and decor. Within the next few days, even their furniture began to dwindle. Madhobi failed to observe most of this, as she was often tucked away in her blanket fort under the winter sun.

The discerning reader would've understood by now that Madhobi's worst nightmare was about to come true: her family was due to move out of Joba Lane, for they could no longer afford the rent due to the losses her father's business had suffered with the arrival of the new grocery store. Madhobi, of course, was too young for anyone to explain this to her.

Only when most of the furniture was packed up and sent to their new, much smaller home in a neighbourhood nearby did she realise that something was amiss. Just the thought of parting with Joba Lane, it's seemingly infinite roof and its stories, made her stomach lurch. This was her home. A home she could never replace.

Author's Note: This story is based in the late 1990s in the city of Kolkata, India. It was a time when the country had just opened the economy to foreign trade, so it was a fresh market for things like cable television, cordless telephones, foreign chocolates, and so on. While most of the instances are derived from the author's own childhood during the same period in the same cultural setting, efforts have been made to not exoticise the setting for Western readers, as the author firmly believes in a Postcolonial approach to her work. Annotations have been kept to a minimum for the same reason. The neighbourhood described here is also based on the neighbourhood in which the author lived as a child, but all characters are purely fictional. In cases where inspiration has been derived for certain characters from real-life people, care has been taken to change their names and coordinates. While the neighbourhood described is based on one that is real, and all rooftop activities are inspired by real incidences, the use of the endless roof as a storytelling device is a homage to Geetanjali Shree's The Roof Beneath their Feet, in which the roof, once again, plays a major role in the storytelling.

Notes

1 The Bengali ritual of taking a nap after a lunch that typically comprises rice. One may compare it to the Spanish concept of a siesta.

2 A Gujarati festival celebrated in autumn.

3 Bengali word for 'thick blanket'.
Robot de cocina1

Sofía Ballesteros

El Thermomix es tan blanco que deslumbra. Me da lástima que se tenga que desgastar desde el momento en que empiece a usarlo. Me siento y lo contemplo, lo describo, cierro los ojos y lo evoco. Si me fijo bien, descubro que esta pulcritud no tiene nada del exceso resplandeciente que me pone la piel chinita en los hospitales. Presiono un botón redondo y plateado. El robot se enciende y suena una tonadilla como de saludo a la reina de la co-cina que soy yo. Porque este es mi lugar. Desde el principio de los tiempos ha sido mi lu-gar. La pantalla del Thermomix se ilumina como un sol radiante para luego saludarme:

—Buenos días. ¿Qué desea cocinar hoy?

Mientras intento pensar en qué se me antojaría comer, mi mente me desvía hacia los para-jes agrestes de mis recuerdos. Me acuerdo cómo antes anduve perdida en salones de cla-ses; en calles, oficinas y cafés; desperdiciada en talentos que ahora debo dejar en el olvido para aprender otros. Como, por ejemplo, planear el menú. ¿De qué manera podría ejecutar semejante tarea ímproba sin la cooperación de la sociedad o de la historia entera?

Thermomix me enseña en su pantalla un catálogo enorme de colecciones de recetas de to-do el mundo. En su Cookidoo se enfilan los espíritus que me protegen, aquellas galardo-nadas malabaristas que reconcilian las contradicciones más irreductibles: la estrechez y el antojo, la apariencia atractiva y la frugalidad, la rapidez y lo apetitoso.

—Todo eso tiene infinitas combinaciones,— me explica mi Thermomix. —¿Qué tal algo esbelto y económico, del recetario de "cinco ingredientes o menos"?— Y me enseña una ensalada tibia de ejotes y tiras delgadas de pechuga de guajolote. —¿O qué te parece algo vistoso y suculento?— pregunta a la vez que aparece en su pantalla la imagen de una ex-quisita pavlova de frutos rojos y merengue. —¿Qué consejo me puede usted dar para la comida de hoy, experta ama de casa, iluminación de las madres presentes y ausentes, voz de la costumbre, secreto a voces del supermercado?

—Es que yo soy vegana y autocomestible,— le contesto. —Todo lo que como es a base de plantas, a excepción de la carne que se desprende de mi cuerpo para que luego me vuelva a crecer más carne en su lugar.

—Así que es usted una caníbal vegana,—dice Thermomix.

—Exactamente,— respondo y se me caen las orejas. Las recojo y las coloco dentro del va-so. Enseguida me salen otras dos orejas a ambos lados de mi cabeza como capullos de flor que se abren.

Thermomix calcula la temperatura de las orejas. —Están muy frías,—dice. —Añade 1/4 de litro de agua para calentarlas un poco.

Obedezco y coloco el cubilete en la tapa. Thermomix mueve sus bracitos de metal como si abrazara a la tapa a fin de que no se salpique el agua caliente por toda la cocina. Preselec-ciona una temperatura de 100ºC y una duración de dos minutos. —Ahora gira el selector al uno, por favor,— me pide.

Enciendo el radio viejo. Está transmitiendo el concierto del octavo reencuentro de la banda Timbiriche. Alix suplica lastimeramente en su canción que la miren porque no es un refle-jo. Lleva más de cuarenta años con la misma canción. Sin embargo, es el himno de todas las generaciones. Y yo tampoco soy el reflejo de una imagen en un cristal. La cerrazón de una conciencia, o de toda conciencia posible, no es algo que pueda deshacerse de mí. Yo sigo con mi vida viscosa, turbia, densa, aunque el que me acompaña y el que está lejos me ignoren, se olviden de mí, me arrinconen, me abandonen, me dejen de amar. Yo también soy una conciencia con el poder de encerrarse, de dejar a otro desamparado y expuesto al aniquilamiento. Yo... La nariz se desprende de mi cara. Thermomix termina de calentar mis orejas y abre sus bracitos para recibir mi nariz en su vaso cocinero. Quito la tapa y la añado al guiso. Escurro el agua. Me sale una nariz nueva en la cara.

—¿Se te antojan unas albóndigas de orejas y nariz en salsa de jitomate y spaghetti?— pregunta Thermomix.

—Sí,— le digo. —Y a mi esposo también le encantarán. Es uno de sus platos favoritos. Añado a mis carnes una pizca de sal y un pequeño diluvio de pimienta, tomillo y mejorana. Pongo una hojita de laurel, según aconseja Thermomix, y echo al vaso el contenido de un frasco de puré de jitomate. Agrego un chorrito de aceite de oliva. Vuelvo a colocar la tapa y su cubilete. Thermomix se programa el tiempo y la temperatura para cocinar. Le doy vuelta al botón al nivel 1 de nuevo. Thermomix cierra sus bracitos sobre la tapa y empieza la coc-ción.

La voz de Alix Timbiriche toma más potencia cuando canta que ella es su propio vuelo, y que es cuestión de tiempo. Sus versos me emocionan. Cojo la espátula como si fuera mi-crófono y canto también. Siento un cosquilleo en mis pies, como si se entumecieran. O como si quisieran volar. Se me desprenden de los tobillos y flotan hacia el robot, que los recibe con sus bracitos de aluminio bien abiertos para añadirlos al guiso. Y como no me puedo mantener de pie porque no tengo, me tambaleo hacia una silla. Mis pies le van a dar a esas albóndigas un umami "quesoso" bien sabroso, pienso. Otro cosquilleo en mis tobi-llos anuncia el brotar de unos pies nuevos. Son rosados, preciosos, y ya tienen hecho el pedicure con las uñitas como pétalos de rosa.

—Gira, por favor, el selector a la velocidad 10 para triturar tus carnes,— solicita Thermo-mix. Hago lo que pide. Su rehilete de navajas es como un torbellino y trabaja en tiempo ré-cord. A los treinta segundos ya está toda la carne molida. El robot enseguida se dispone a darle forma de bolitas a la carne. Oigo un tintineo de mi celular. Es la alerta de suscripcio-nes del club de fans de Sleater-Kinney. Acaba de salir su nuevo single. La emoción me ele-va el ánimo hasta las nubes. Le apago al concierto de Timbiriche y pongo el altavoz blue-tooth a que se empareje con mi teléfono que tiene Apple Music. La canción se descarga al instante. Le pongo play. La portentosa batería de Janet2 estalla y sobrepasa lo trillado de bombear al ritmo de mi corazón y se dirige más al poder de mi mente, que hace que el sue-lo de la cocina se transforme en un tumbling, como esos en los que solía saltar y jugar cuando era niña. Y las guitarras de Corin y Carrie explotan el techo sin dejar escombros, y entra a mi casa una brisa fresca, deliciosa. Mis pies nuevos se impulsan en el sue-lo/trampolín de la cocina. Doy maromas en el aire. La canción me hace tan feliz que se me olvida por un momento que para todo se me cargan las tareas y responsabilidades de una criada. Tengo que mantener impecable la casa, la ropa lavada y planchada, el ritmo de las comidas siempre marchando. Y además no se me paga ningún sueldo ni se me concede un día de descanso a la semana, ni puedo cambiar de amo. ¿O sí? Carrie canta acerca de cómo la desconexión de la piel de una puede suponer un reinicio. Se me ocurre un plan. Saco una botella de mezcal liliputiense. Visualizo el vibrador que guardo en mi cajón de la ropa íntima y le pongo un hechizo de extensión indetectable.

—Ya están listas las albóndigas,—anuncia Thermomix. Las bolitas de carne están forma-das a la perfección, todas miden el π más exacto posible, y su salsa de tomate emite un aroma exquisito. Las pongo en un refractario y empiezo a hacer la pasta con la ayuda in-dispensable de mi robot. Enjuago el vaso del Thermomix y lo vuelvo a llenar con agua. Se-lecciono una temperatura y un tiempo para que hierva. Diez minutos para la ebullición. Sa-co un paquete de fideos secos de la despensa.

Una vez tuve un novio más bajito que yo. Parecía ardilla, con sus dientes grandes y sus ojitos negros y chispeantes, así que pensé que sería divertido decirle Alvin. Tenía unos amigos que se decían a sí mismos "las marmotas", por lo que no me imaginé que le iba a molestar. Habría sido genial que se le hubiera ocurrido decirme Brittany, pero no quiso porque, según él, yo no parecía ardilla sino jirafa. Podía haberme transformado, hecho chi-quita y dentuda, para ser una graciosa pareja de caricatura, pero el hombrecito se ofendió cuando seguí diciéndole Alvin y, resoplando humo de arsénico en mi cara, me mandó a la chingada. Y me inmolé. Y resurgí de las cenizas, una alondra. —Ni en mi casa, ni en mi vi-da, ya no mandas tú,— canté y me fui a dormir a los brazos de mi mamá.

Qué dicha es poder ser bebé otra vez cuando una lo necesita. Pequeña y limpia, rodeada del amor más grande, el cuidado más tierno, llenándote de fortaleza desde el corazón para mostrarte al mundo en el papel que tú elijas, libre de todo ese rollo cínico que para algunos significa "ser adulto"...

—Tu ru tu tu,— canta Thermomix para indicar que el agua ya está hirviendo. Ahora he de añadir la pasta. Quito el cubilete de la tapa e introduzco por el agujero un manojo de fi-deos. Programo el tiempo que indica en el paquete para que queden "al dente" y le pico al botón de "cocinar" en la pantalla.

Voy a ser, a partir de hoy, lo que yo escoja en este momento. Encantadoramente atolon-drada, profundamente tímida, hipócrita. Voy a imponer desde el inicio, con un poquito de impertinencia, las normas del juego. Mi esposo sentirá rencor por la impronta de mi domi-nio que se irá dilatando como los círculos en la superficie del agua cuando se le avienta una piedra. Va a forcejear para prevalecer y si cede yo le compensaré con el desprecio y si no cede yo no podré perdonarlo.

—Usa el Varoma para escurrir la pasta,— me aconseja mi Thermomix cuando el spaghetti está en el punto perfecto de cocción. Saco del cajón una especie de tazón con el fondo agujereado y lo coloco en el fregadero. Luego vacío el contenido del vaso del robot. Agito el Varoma para que se le quite toda el agua a la pasta. Transfiero el spaghetti a un plato pa-ra servir. Lo mezclo con la salsa de tomate. Parecen nervios ensangrentados. Añado las albóndigas de mis carnes y lo revuelvo todo.

Si adopto la otra actitud, si soy el caso común, la femineidad que requiere indulgencia cuando comete errores, la báscula se inclinará a favor de mi adversario y yo formaré parte de la competencia con un handicap que aparentemente me predestina al fracaso y que, en el fondo, me asegura el triunfo mediante la tortuosa vía que recorrieron mis antepasadas, las humildes, las que solamente abrían los labios para decir que sí, y lograron la obediencia del otro hasta su capricho más irracional.

Nomás que me da asco portarme de esa manera. Esta definición no se aplica a mí y la ante-rior tampoco. Ninguna se corresponde con mi verdad interior, ninguna resguarda mi au-tenticidad. ¿Debo acogerme a cualquiera de ellas y amarrarme a sus condiciones solo por-que es un lugar común aprobado por la mayoría y fácil de entender para todos?

Porque lo que yo realmente quiero es mi habitación propia Woolfiana y llenarla de queers. Como el otro día en que mi esposo no estaba y me probé alguna de su ropa para luego ir a participar a un concurso de drag. Tenía la idea de transformarme en una versión exagerada y extravagante de Luis Miguel filtrado por Manila Luzon. Mi look era como si hubieran ex-plotado en mí todos los atuendos estereotípicos de la etiqueta masculina y femenina a la vez. Iba con vestido/tuxedo, nudos de origami en la corbata, zapatos con tacones altos. Me puse King D'Acapu$$y como nombre drag y salí del sarcófago como Shangela. El sarcófago siendo en este caso la casa de mi marido. Halleloo.

Si me obstino en afirmar mi versión de los hechos mi esposo me va a mirar con sospecha, se va a sentir incómodo al estar conmigo, y va a vivir en la continua expectativa de que se me declare loca, pienso, mientras se escurren de mis sienes unas neuronas en filamentos que servirán como guarnición para la pasta. Las echo al vaso del Thermomix y el robot les da una textura como de queso parmesano. Justo a tiempo, llega mi marido a casa para ce-nar. La mesa está puesta, con dos manteles individuales, platos y cubiertos, vasos para el agua, y jícaras para el mezcal. Un florero lleno de rosas, gardenias, y ramas de eucalipto adorna la mesa y llena el comedor de una fragancia deliciosa, que evoca un jardín botánico en el cual una podría pasarse horas descubriendo y admirando toda la vegetación exótica.

Cenamos. Mi esposo enrolla los fideos con su tenedor como cuando me acaricia el pelo y enrolla mis rizos alrededor de su dedo, con mucha ternura. No sé si se ha dado cuenta de qué están hechas las albóndigas.

—Sabes,— me dice, —cuando era chiquito pensaba que las albóndigas estaban hechas de cosquillas.

—Como en el cuento de Tío Patota,— concuerdo. Siento un cosquilleo a la vez que él mastica una albóndiga. El vínculo nervioso con mis carnes desprendidas no se ha ido del todo. ¿Cómo fue posible, entonces, que yo no hubiese sentido nada cuando Thermomix me estaba triturando? El robot se ilumina y anuncia, tun tun, que tiene la respuesta.

—Porque te encontrabas en un estado de sublimación espiritual gracias a la música de Sleater-Kinney,— explica Thermomix, —y porque tu cuerpo se regeneraba mientras se co-cinaba la cena. Lo que sientes cuando mastican las albóndigas tu esposo y tú debe ser porque los lazos con la piel del pasado son más profundos de lo que te imaginas.

—Las albóndigas sí que tienen sabor a ti,— añade mi esposo. Abre la botella de mezcal liliputiense y se sirve hasta llegar al tope de su jícara. Se lo bebe a besitos, levantando el dedo meñique, muy aristócrata. Hasta que, de repente, se vuelve del tamaño de ese dedo y cae dentro de la jícara. Me acerco a ver si está enojado.

Nuestra coexistencia no podrá ser más conflictiva. Y él no quiere problemas de ningún ti-po. Y mucho menos conflictos tan absurdos, tan abstractos, tan metafísicos como los que yo podría plantearle. Su casa es un remanso de paz en el cual se guarece de las tempesta-des de la vida. Yo lo acepté cuando me casé y estaba dispuesta a llegar hasta el sacrificio en aras del acuerdo conyugal. Pero yo pensaba que el sacrificio, el renunciamiento absolu-to a quien soy no se me exigiría más que en la Sublime Ocasión, en la Hora de las Grandes Resoluciones, en el Momento de la Decisión Definitiva. No con lo que me he enfrentado hoy que es algo muy ridículo, muy exiguo. Sin embargo...

—Tu run tun tun. Tal vez no eres tú la del renunciamiento completo,— augura mi Ther-momix, que ya se cree gurú, a la vez que mi esposo diminuto, feliz de la vida, practica nado estilo perrito en el mezcal. Le sonrío, divertida, y le digo que le tengo una sorpresa. Lo sa-co cuidadosamente de la jícara y nos vamos a mi habitación. Aquí ya no se oyen los soni-dos del Thermomix. Le doy un beso y al acercar a él mis labios exclama:

—¡Wow! ¡Qué cambiazo de perspectiva! ¡Tu boca parece un cielo rosa lleno de estrellas!

Lo pongo sobre la almohada y se recuesta cómodamente, antes quitándose la ropa empa-pada de mezcal. Abro mi cajón de las pijamas y me pongo mi camisón favorito de algodón azul cielo con tiras de encaje en los hombros. Me siento cómoda y feliz en esta prenda, lo que es más importante, además de que a mi esposito le parece sexy.

—Pareces una gran diosa,— dice, explotando en risotadas con ese sencillo juego de pala-bras. Me río con él de su chistecito.

—Ahora es el momento de enseñarte la sorpresa que te tengo preparada,— le digo a mi esposito a la vez que abro el cajón de la lencería y saco mi "Orgasmador Electrónico".

—Ábrete puerta,— digo, a la vez que presiono un botoncito plateado y se abre una puertita al costado del dildo. Mi esposo entra y se queda maravillado. Porque el interior del aparati-to está impecablemente amueblado como nuestro hogar. Tiene un sofá azul muy cómodo para descansar y una tele con Flixnet e Infilm, para ver series y películas al momento que le plazca. —¿Y ya para qué sirven los canales?— dice mi esposo, encantado porque también está la app de deportes en la tele interdildar. En otra habitación hay un mini-gimnasio con pesas, caminadora, escaladora y bicicleta estática. —¡Ideal! Porque no me voy a pasar el día entero echado viendo la tele.

Mi esposo continúa explorando el dildopartamento y llega a la zona del cabezal. Hay una puerta con una placa que dice "cuarto de controles orgásmicos". —Oh, a ver qué hay aquí,— dice, curioso y pícaro. Abre la puerta y entra a un tipo de laboratorio donde descu-bre un tablero lleno de botones, todos especializados para mi placer y bienestar sexual. El cuarto también podría compararse con la cabina de un buque submarino, en miniatura, por supuesto. Los botones tienen distintas funciones como ritmo, velocidad, intensidad, tem-peratura, viscosidad y elasticidad.

—Wow,—dice mi esposo. —¿Lo podemos probar ahora?

Yo le digo que sí y me recuesto cómodamente en la cama perfumada con mi aroma favori-to de lavanda y azahar. Abro mis piernas y mi esposo, sentado en los controles del dildo submarino, la ilusión del espíritu explorador iluminándole los ojos de sol, lo conduce hasta que se sumerge en el océano de mis genitales. Siento, a la vez que el "submadildo" emite sus placenteras pulsaciones, cómo mis partes íntimas se van desprendiendo de mi cuerpo con cada caricia. Llego al orgasmo y exploto. Mi esposo sale del dildo submarino y camina por la cama hacia la mesita de noche. Se bebe un sorbito de brebaje Engorgio Aranmi y re-cupera su tamaño natural.

—Creo que mañana comemos tacos de carnitas,— dice y recoge mis trozos corporales re-gados por toda la recámara. Los lleva a la cocina y los echa al vaso del Thermomix, que co-cinará durante la noche y tendrá listas las carnitas al día siguiente.

Mi esposo regresa y se mete en la cama junto a mí. Y, por fin, me dejo caer en un sueño profundo y regenerador, en el mejor sentido de la palabra. Cuando despierto a la mañana siguiente, me encuentro a mi esposo hecho pedazos envueltos en hoja de árbol bananero. Hay tamales para desayunar.

Notas

1 Este relato es un inspirado diálogo con 'Robot de cocina' de Rosario Castellanos. Obras reunidas II. Cuentos/Rosario Castellanos: presentación de Eduardo Mejía — México FCE 2005.

2 Janet aún no había dejado el grupo cuando esto fue escrito.
Kitchen Robot1

Sofía Ballesteros

The Thermomix is so white it gleams. It behooves me that it must be tainted from the moment I begin to use it. I sit down and contemplate it, describe it, close my eyes and evoke it. When I examine it closely, I discover that the machine's spotlessness lacks the glaring excess that gives one goosebumps when in hospital. I push the round silver button. The robot turns on and plays a little tune to greet me, the queen of the kitchen. Because this is my place. Since the beginning of time it has been my place. The Thermomix screen lights up like a beaming sun and says:

"Good morning. What would you like to cook today?"

While I try to think of what I feel like eating, my mind wanders to the remote parts of my memories. I remember how I used to wander lost in classrooms; in streets, in offices, in cafes; wasting my time on learning skills that I now have to forget in order to make room for new ones. Skills like, for example, picking a menu. How could I complete such an enormous task without the cooperation of society, of all history?

Thermomix shows me a huge catalogue of recipes from all over the world on its screen. My guardian spirits align in Thermomix's Cookidoo, those hailed tight-rope walkers which reconcile the most irreconcilable of contradictions: healthy and indulgent, appetising and cheap, fast and yet delicious.

"Everything has an infinite number of combinations," Thermomix explains. "How about something healthy and cheap, from the recipe collection entitled 'Five ingredients or less'?" Thermomix shows me a warm green bean salad with thin strips of turkey breast. "Or how about something appetising and delicious?" it asks, while a picture of an exquisite pavlova with red fruits and meringue pops up on the screen. "What do you recommend for today's meal, oh experienced housewife, enlightenment of mothers past and present, voice of tradition, badly kept secret of the supermarket?"

"It's just that I'm a vegan and self-consuming," I answer. "Everything I eat is plant-based, apart from the flesh that falls off my body. My body regenerates, you see, so new flesh grows in its place."

"So, you're a vegan cannibal," says Thermomix.

"Exactly," I reply, and my ears fall off. I pick them up and put them in Thermomix. Right away, two new ears grow out of each side of my head like blossoming flower buds.

Thermomix calculates the temperature of my ears. "They're very cold," it says. "Add 250ml of water to warm them up a little."

I do as Thermomix says and place the Varoma on top of the lid. Thermomix moves its little metal arms, as if to hug the lid tight, and locks it in place so that the hot water doesn't erupt all over the kitchen. It preselects a temperature of 100ºC and a duration of 2 minutes. "Now, please turn the dial to 1," it asks me.

I turn on the old radio. They're broadcasting Timbiriche's eighth reunion concert. Alix requests plaintively to be looked at like she's not a reflection. They've been singing the same song for over 40 years but it's still the anthem of every generation. And I too, am not the reflection of an image in a window. I will not be destroyed by the dimming of a conscience or any conscience at all. I shall go on living a dense, viscous and murky life, even though the man at my side and the one far away ignore, forget, postpone, abandon and cease to love me. I am also a conscience that can end its existence, I too can abandon others and leave them exposed to destruction. I...

My nose falls off my face. Thermomix finishes warming my ears and opens its arms, ready to receive my nose in its mixing bowl. I take off the lid and add it to the stew. I drain the water. A new nose appears on my face.

"Do you fancy ear and nose meatballs cooked in a tomato sauce with spaghetti?" asks Thermomix.

"Yes," I tell it. "My husband will love that as well. It's one of his favourite dishes." I add a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper, thyme and marjoram, followed by a bay leaf, at Thermomix's request, and then I pour in a jar of tomato purée. Next, I drizzle in some olive oil. Then I replace the lid and put the Varoma back on top. Thermomix sets the cooking time and temperature. I turn the dial back to 1 again. Thermomix closes its little arms around the lid and begins cooking.

Alix Timbiriche's voice is more powerful when she sings that she's a destiny of her own and a matter of time. Her verses move me. I pick up the spatula as if it's a microphone and sing along. I feel a tingling in my feet, as if they've gone numb. Or as if they want to fly. I detach myself from my feet at the ankle and float towards the robot who receives them into its open aluminium arms and adds them to the stew. As I can no longer stand on my own two feet, because I don't have any, I totter over to a chair. I think my feet will give the meatballs a 'cheesy' and delicious umami flavour. Another tingle in my ankles signals the sprouting of two new feet. They're beautiful, pink and have already been pedicured so the nails look like rose petals.

"Please turn the dial to speed 10 to grind up your flesh," asks Thermomix. I do as it asks. Its blades move like a tornado and get the job done in record time. It takes Thermomix just 30 seconds to grind everything together. The robot then begins to shape my flesh into meatballs. I hear my phone gone off. It's a subscription alert from the Sleater-Kinney fan club. They have just released a new single. The excitement sends my spirits through the roof. I turn off the Timbiriche concert and pair my phone with the Bluetooth speaker so that I can use Apple Music. The song downloads instantly. I press play. Janet's2 superb drumming bursts through the speakers and makes the rhythm of my heart beat more furiously than usual. It helps me harness the power of mind, which turns the kitchen floor turn into a tumbling mat, just like the ones that I used to jump and play on as a child. The sound of Corin and Carrie's guitars bursts through the roof, without leaving any rubble behind, and a pleasant cool breeze blows into the house. My new feet push against the kitchen floor/trampoline. I do somersaults in the air. This song makes me so happy that, for a moment, I forget about all the chores and responsibilities that everyone places on my shoulders as a housemaid. I have to keep the house spotless, the clothes clean, the meals continually coming. I don't get paid. I don't get a day off. I can't leave. Or can I? Carrie sings about how disconnection from one's skin can be a new beginning. And then a plan comes to me. I get out a tiny bottle of mezcal. I imagine the vibrator that I keep in my underwear drawer and cast an undetectable extension charm on it.

"The meatballs are ready," announces Thermomix. The little balls of meat are perfectly formed, with each one weighing exactly the same amount, and the tomato sauce smells amazing. I put them in a casserole dish and begin to make the pasta with the indispensable help of my robot. I rinse out Thermomix's mixing bowl and refill it with water. I set the temperature and time to bring it to a boil – ten minutes. I get a packet of dried pasta out of the cupboard.

I once dated a guy shorter than me. He looked like a chipmunk, big teeth and sparkling dark eyes, so I thought it would be fun to call him Alvin. He had a group of friends who used to call themselves 'The Marmots' so I didn't think it would have annoyed him. I wish he had called me Brittany but he didn't want to because, according to him, I didn't look like a chipmunk; I looked like a giraffe. I could've changed my look, made myself smaller with bigger teeth, so that we could be a funny cartoon couple, but he got offended when I kept calling him Alvin so, through a cloud of cigarette smoke, he told me to go to hell. I sacrificed myself and rose from the ashes a lark. "You don't call the shots anymore. Not in my house, not in my life," I sang and went to my mother to sleep in her arms.

What joy it is to be able to become a baby again when you need to. Small and clean, surrounded by the greatest love, the gentlest care, filling yourself up with strength from the heart so that you can present yourself to the world in whatever role you choose, free from all this cynical nonsense some call 'being an adult'...

Thermomix sings a little tune to let me know that the water is now boiling. I now have to add the pasta. I take the Varoma dish off the lid and feed a handful of pasta through the hole. I set the time recommended on the packet for 'al dente' and press the 'cook' button on the screen.

I will be, from now on, whatever I choose in this moment. Seductively dazed, deeply timid or hypocritical. I will impose the rules of the game from the start, with just a touch of impertinence. My husband will resent the mark of my dominion which will expand like ripples on the surface of water after you throw in a stone. He will fight to win and if he yields, I will reward him with contempt but if he does not yield, I will not be able to forgive him.

"Use the Varoma to drain the pasta," suggests Thermomix when the spaghetti is cooked to perfection. I get a colander out of the drawer and place it in the sink. Then I empty the contents of the mixing bowl into it. I shake the Varoma so that all the water drains off the pasta and transfer the spaghetti to a plate to serve. I mix it with the tomato sauce. They look like bloody nerves. I add the meatballs made from my flesh and toss it all together.

If I am to assume the other attitude, if I am the classic example of femininity that seeks an indulgence for her misdeeds, the balance would shift in favour of my adversary. I would compete with a handicap that seemingly destines me for failure but that, in the end, guarantees me victory by the winding road taken by my humble ancestors who only opened their mouths to agree, were subservient to others and, thus, got them to obey even the most irrational of their whims.

It's just that acting this way disgusts me. This definition does not apply to me, and neither does the previous one. None of these can describe my inner truth, neither can protect my authenticity. Must I take refuge in one of them and conform to its terms just because it's commonplace, accepted by the masses and easily understood by everyone?

Because what I really want is my own Woolfian room and to fill it with queers. Just the other day, when my husband wasn't home, I tried on some of his clothes so that I could compete in a drag contest. I had the idea to transform myself into an exaggerated and extravagant version of Luis Miguel crossed with Manila Luzon. I looked like all the clothing stereotypes of masculine and feminine etiquette had exploded on me at the same time. I wore a dress/tuxedo, origami knots in my tie and a pair of high heels. My drag name was King D'Acapu$$y and I emerged from a box like Shangela. The box was my husband's house. Halleloo.

If I insist on pursuing my version of events, my husband will look at me with suspicion, he'll feel awkward in my company and he'll continually wait for them to declare me insane, I think, while threads of nerve cells drip down my temples; a garnish for the pasta. I put them into Thermomix and the robot grinds them up until they look like parmesan cheese.

My husband comes home just in time to eat. The table is set, with cutlery, two placemats, plates, water glasses and little cups for the mezcal. A vase full of roses, gardenia and eucalyptus branches adorns the table and fills the dining room with a gorgeous smell that reminds me of a botanical garden where you could spend hours discovering and admiring all the exotic plants.

We eat. My husband wraps the pasta around his fork like he does with my hair when he very tenderly wraps my curls around his finger. I don't know if he has realised what the meatballs are made of.

"Did you know," he says to me, "that when I was a kid, I thought that meatballs were made from tickling?"

"Like in the Tío Patota stories," I agree. I feel a tingle as my husband chews a meatball. The nervous connection in my detached body parts hasn't completely disappeared. But how come I didn't feel anything when Thermomix was grinding up my flesh before? The robot lights up and announces, with a little tune, that it has the answer.

"It's because you were in a state of spiritual sublimation, thanks to Sleater-Kinney's music, and because your body was regenerating while dinner was cooking. What you can feel when you and your husband chew the meatballs is happening because the bonds with your past self are deeper than you can imagine."

"The meatballs really do taste like you," adds my husband. He opens the tiny bottle of mezcal and fills the glass to the brim. He drinks it in little sips, with his little finger raised. He looks very aristocratic until he suddenly shrinks to the same size as that very finger and falls into the glass. I go over to him to see if he is ok.

Our cohabitation couldn't possibly be more conflictive. He doesn't want problems of any kind. Much less arguments as abstract, absurd and metaphysical as the ones that I start with him. His home is a haven of peace in which he can hide from the storms of life. Granted, I agreed to get married and was willing to go as far as being a sacrifice in the name of matrimonial harmony. What I counted on was that this sacrifice, the complete renouncement of all that I am, would not demand more of me than the Sublime Occasion, in the Hour of Great Resolutions, at the Moment of Definitive Decision. Not on what I came across today, something extremely insignificant and ridiculous. And yet...

"Perhaps you're not the one who has to completely renounce oneself," predicts my Thermomix, who has now become a self-made guru, as my tiny husband, perfectly content, does the doggy paddle in the mezcal. I smile at him, amused, and tell him that I have a surprise. I carefully take him out of the glass, and we go to my bedroom. The sounds of the Thermomix cannot be heard in here. I give him a kiss and as I bring him closer to my lips he exclaims, "Wow! What a change in perspective! Your mouth looks like a pink sky full of stars!"

I set him on the pillow, and he leans back comfortably after taking off his mezcal soaked clothes. I open my pyjama drawer and put on my favourite sky-blue cotton nightdress, the one with lace on the shoulders. I feel comfortable and happy in this dress, which is of primary importance, as well as looking sexy for my husband.

"You look grand," he says and bursts out laughing at his word play. I also laugh at his little joke.

"Now it's time to show you the surprise I have for you," I say to my tiny husband as I open my underwear drawer and take out my 'Electronic Orgasmator.'

"Open up," I say, as I press a little silver button and a little door opens on the side of the vibrator. My husband goes in and is mesmerised. The inside of the little vibrator is impeccably furnished and looks just like our home. There's a very comfortable blue sofa to relax on and a TV with a plethora of streaming services to watch series and movies whenever you want. "What are the channels for?" asks my husband, amazed by the fact that the little TV has the sports app. In another room there is a mini-gym kitted out with weights, a treadmill, a Stairmaster and an exercise bike. "It's perfect! I'm not going to spend the whole day watching TV!"

My husband continues exploring the dildopartment and arrives at the control room. There is a door with a sign on it that says: 'Orgasm Control Deck'. "Oh, let's see what's in here," he says, curious and mischievous. He opens the door and goes into a kind of laboratory where he finds a control panel covered in buttons all tailored to my pleasure and sexual well-being. The room could also be compared to the cockpit of a submarine, in miniature size of course. The buttons are labelled with different functions such as rhythm, speed, intensity, temperature, viscosity, and flexibility.

"Wow," says my husband. "Can we try it now?"

I agree and recline comfortably on the bed. It smells like lavender and orange blossom, my favourite. I open my legs and husband, who's seated in the control room of the submarine dildo, with the spirit of an intrepid explorer twinkling in his eyes, drives until it's submerged in the ocean of my genitals. As the submadildo pulses, I feel my private parts detach from my body with every caress. I orgasm and explode. My husband gets out of the submarine vibrator and walks across the bed towards the bedside table. He takes a sip of Engorgio Aranmi potion and returns to his normal size.

"I think we should have tacos tomorrow," he says and picks up the pieces of my body that have been scattered all across the bedroom. He takes them to the kitchen and puts them in Thermomix, who will cook through the night and have them ready the next day.

My husband returns and lies next to me on the bed. Finally, I drift into a deep and, in the best sense of the word, regenerative sleep. When I wake up the next morning, I find my husband in pieces, all wrapped in a banana tree leaf. I guess I'll have tamales for breakfast.

Translated by Aimée Rogers and Sofía Ballesteros.

Notes

1 This story is an inspired dialogue with 'Robot de cocina' by Rosario Castellanos. Obras reunidas II. Cuentos/Rosario Castellanos: presentación de Eduardo Mejía – México FCE 2005.

2 Janet had not left the band at the time this was written.

Municipal Villanelle (an interlude)

Lydia Unsworth

Propinquity holds me tightly by the ankle.

A city is not a city unless you also hate it;

the way it draws you in then lets you dangle.

Buildings sprout and thrive and come at you from all angles.

You run, you leave, you hide – anything to abate it;

the way your city has you tightly by the ankle.

From over oceans, you and your former city wrangle;

in your memory it multiplies so that you cannot shake it.

It draws you deeply in then lets you dangle.

The more you try to free yourself, the more you are entangled;

desire grows and spreads when purely in our minds we make it.

Manchester gnaws me nightly at the ankle,

Leads me through cobbled streets, down red-brick aisles by lighted candle,

promises me its hand if only I'll concede to take it,

draws me close – its breath! – and lets its grubby fingers dangle.

Still, here I stand – alone, in nothing but my sandals:

trying to belong, trying not to fake it,

making sure I'm still caught firmly by the ankle.

(When the world draws in, please take me home. Don't let me dangle.)
Waith and Wrack

Juliette F. Martin

Nadine looked up and down the line of cottages. Noticed the 'for sale' signs posted above their doors. There could hardly be interested buyers for even one, let alone a whole shoreline of them. Behind her, the sea rolled in and out, its wet breathing uninterrupted. No little feet racing the tide, no swimmers braving the relentlessly chill waters.

Historic or no, they ought to bulldoze the whole village. History was over for Inchmuir.

Last time Nadine visited – and, in fact, most times – it was for her daughter. Hannah had dived from the car and raced up the garden path into her grandfather's arms. Grandad always had time, a warm hug, a story to tell about children vanishing into fairy mounds or the exploits of a long-dead ancestor. Always the nurturer. They'd spent the week studying the many-armed creatures of tide pools, and Hannah had decided she wanted to be a marine biologist.

It was no wonder Hannah would spend the final days of any visit begging to stay. But they had only each other now, and she'd have to make do.

There weren't many children in town when the people of Inchmuir died. Mostly, it was the elderly. The descendants of families that had lived on the island and fished its waters for centuries. People who watched Nadine grow up beside their own children. It was vengeance, maybe, or simply the recalling of a debt; the sea reclaiming the lives it had thanklessly nurtured.

Carrying her armload of groceries from the car into the kitchen, Nadine could almost pretend nothing had changed. The house was the same. Soothing blue walls. Dad's books in a pile by his chair.

Nadine moved out at eighteen, drawn away by the promise of university. She'd spent those first years pulling Inchmuir's fishhooks out of her skin and muscle one by one, reinventing herself as she went. It wasn't until Hannah was born that she'd even visited. She'd owed her daughter that – the privilege of family. Of history.

Hungry after nearly five hours of driving, Nadine dumped the bags on the table and dug through them for a plum. She stood over the sink and bit into it, relishing the sweet flesh as it tore apart under her teeth.

Coming here was supposed to give her closure. Not answers – whatever the truth of the matter was, she doubted it was anything she'd be able to uncover – but perhaps an end to the questions.

When the rotten body of a minke whale first washed up on the shores of Inchmuir two months before, Nadine's father had sent her a photo. She hadn't bothered to respond. Similar pictures made their way into the newspapers. No answers there, the experts all agreed. It was just the corpse of a minke whale, days dead.

She thought about Mara's face, the sympathetic draw of her brow as Nadine explained where she was going.

Of course, she'd said, I'll take Hannah for the week. You need time to grieve. This is what friends are for. What would she say if Nadine replanted herself in this desiccated town and never came back?

The plum pit sat naked in her hand. What a hideous thing, under all that sweet pulp.

Some of the residents of Inchmuir reported, in the hours before they died, something else washed up on the beach. Alive, and covered in great black eyes that blinked from between folds of iridescent flesh. A mouth full of teeth, opening and closing thanklessly in the sand.

Blanched and bulbous corpses had been washing up ever since. It was as if the villagers simply walked into the tide, the whale that wasn't a whale vanishing with them into the sea.

Dad had always kept a fine whisky under the sink. It was still there. Nadine brought it outside, slipped off her shoes, and walked out onto the sand. The water rose to meet her. She let it wash over her feet, her ankles. Walked out until it was halfway up her calves.

Maybe one day they'd figure it out. A toxic gas released by the corpse. Mass hysteria. Who knew.

Hannah's football game was on Saturday. Nadine tossed the plum pit out into the ocean and turned back to shore. She'd be home by then.
All the Vulnerable Things

Vina Nguyen

Early that Saturday morning, she almost didn't hear it – the half-hearted knocking at the door.

Three nights Lan had waited to tell him that the bamboo tree had stopped yellowing, that she'd thrown out the bedroom mirror and bought a new one for the dining area, and that old Mr Lau downstairs had finally agreed to give them his small fish tank, for free. Their luck was turning around.

She opened the door to a short, young man with thin, sinewy arms and a long neck. He stood there, leaning against the frame, wearing the tired, grey shirt she had sewn for him years ago for their first-year anniversary. She took his wearing the shirt as a sign of possible reconciliation.

"Our luck is turning around," she said again.

"I didn't come here for that," he said, from outside the door, with the hollows under his eyes and his hair greasy like the oil from the cars he worked on.

He demanded his patched-up duffle bag of shirts, pants, and underwear. Lan quietly stepped over to the bathroom closet, took her time finding and unzipping it, folding his clothes, and laying them neatly into the soft, worn bottom of the bag. Her hands caressed the fabrics, her fingers running over the textures. She sniffed the collars of his shirts. As she added in a towel, some new socks, and the last toothbrush in the cupboard for him, she couldn't bring herself to cry. He just needed a bit of time and space to cool his nerves, she thought. When she handed him his bag, he paused and searched the zippered compartments.

"Where's my lucky jade?" His tight face turned white. "My dad gave that to me."

They searched the apartment like mice but found nothing.

"Forget it," he said. "This place is cursed anyway."

She thought: And you're leaving us behind in a cursed place?

As he turned to leave, she said, "What about Tree?" She stared down at her feet, blinking wildly. "I'm not good with plants, and it's yours. It stopped yellowing, too."

He glanced back with a touch of annoyance in his brow but didn't break his stride, not even for a second, down that dim hallway.

***

Hours later, she scolded their daughter for the second time. "Anh, stop eating that candy! You haven't had your breakfast yet. How many times do I have to tell you –"

"Can I eat it after rice?" three-year-old Anh chirped back from the kitchen.

Lan yanked roughly on the metal-beaded string and the dusty curtains parted in the living room. She wondered whether she needed to start looking for a cheaper place. The rust-orange light poured in from the alley, washing across their carpet, coffee table, Avocado (his couch), and Tree (his beloved lucky bamboo plant). Surely, he would come back for Tree.

When they had first moved into this apartment, it was his idea to lug the couch from the alley into their home. Its upholstery was not the deep green of an avocado's shell nor vibrant like its flesh, but was scarred with a huge, round stain resembling the large seed of an avocado across its middle cushion. Lan had protested – there was no way they would bring this eyesore into their new home. The stain had soaked straight through to the other side; there would be no hiding it.

But he'd thrown a felt blanket over the stain, slapped his thigh, chuckling, "Look at our luck!" Then called it endearingly, "My Avocado."

Now she tossed the blanket into the laundry bin, stared at the round stain that seemed to spread outwards, growing larger every day, and clenched her teeth.

Outside, their designated parking stall revealed only gravel and a cement bar with the hand-painted, mustard '305' – the five backwards. She stared at the vacant lot, imagining their blue Honda Civic that used to sit squarely in between the marked lines, imagining gentle snoring – low and deep – coming from their empty bedroom. Snoring that used to calm her after long shifts at the restaurant. She shook her head, saw the '305' again, the backwards five irritating her to no end. "But three and five make eight," he'd said, always with a grin.

She spun away from the window and took only a few steps before keeling over in pain. Without stopping to look, she kicked away the sharp objects from under her feet, then realized her mistake. "Fuck." She'd stepped on half of her daughter's Lego gallery. Slumping to the floor with a pressed palm to her forehead, Lan recalled how Anh had sat on the carpet a few days ago with a curled pinky against her cheek and mouth agape, shifting her Lego sculptures around for twenty long minutes before settling upon some invisible order. Lan closed her eyes and tried to breathe as she rocked back and forth, rubbing her sore feet. Dread filled her lungs.

Just as she anticipated, Anh thundered over almost immediately, a deep frown on her chubby face. "You broke it! Why didn't you look?" She thumped her fluffy, green polka-dotted feet against the carpet – up down, up down. The toddler could scream; Lan had always been terrified of her lung capacity, terrified that they'd be evicted one day because of it.

"I'm fixing it," Lan said, annoyed, as she tried to put the pieces back together and back into their original arrangement. But Anh continued to scream. Lan snapped her head around. "What is it? I'm here fixing it, aren't I? It's been sitting here like this for three days – you need to put them away." She rose from the floor and crossed her arms, looking down at Anh. "You know what? If you keep screaming, I will put them away."

"I want him to see it. He has to see it!" Anh said, thumping her feet again.

"I saw it! I saw it for three days. Isn't that enough?"

"No," said the frowning three-year-old as she snatched the pieces from Lan's hand and bent over the carpet, meticulously rebuilding her gallery. She'd given them names, too: Worm, Caterpillar, Apple, Heart, Daddy, and Sad. Lan felt her left fist tighten as she crouched down, a few steps away from her daughter, to examine a Lego house built with red and yellow bricks perched on the cliff of the coffee table. She pushed it in and stood up, feeling the room spin as her heart cramped.

***

In their Vietnamese language, 'anh' was how one would address older men, male partners, and older brothers. It was also how these men referred to themselves when speaking to their younger siblings, their partners, or someone younger. So, instead of "I love you," it was, "Anh yêu em."

That's how he'd asked her to live with him. They never got married though. No ring either. "All good things take time," he'd said to her that morning when she was sulky over her girlfriend, Mai, getting properly proposed to on one knee with a ten-thousand-dollar rock from a dentist. Truthfully, she didn't want a ring – it was money that could be put to better use and money they didn't have. But for how long would she need to hand-wash their clothes, ask for second-hand kitchen utensils and hand-me-downs for their daughter, take from the food bank, bum rides to work from her neighbour to save a few dollars of gas each week, and hand-stitch every little tear instead of sending the clothes off to a fancy tailor like Mai did?

***

A sound, like a release of suction, then a quiet thud, snapped Lan out of her rumination. She looked behind her as she walked to the kitchen, and, seeing that Anh had restored the gallery to exactly how it'd been before, a small smile spread across her face. Her daughter was, admittedly, sharp and bright; she'd grow up to be a proud, strong woman – better than her mother – and she wouldn't let zodiac charts, superstitions, or feng shui rule her life.

Entering the kitchen, she saw Anh's splayed hands wrapped around a one-litre carton, dipping it slowly to kiss the lip of a cup. The milk trickled out with ease. Anh grinned to herself, grains of rice stickered to her pink cheeks.

The very first time, though, he'd had to coax her: "Like this, nice and easy. No rush, you see?" That was only four weeks ago. Anh had stared at him with such awe, her eyes glowing with admiration, love, and trust... Lan had felt her chest crack open, laying out on the table sore and raw. She'd yelled at Anh only moments before for slopping the milk all over the kitchen counter.

The soreness returned now, as she watched Anh drink from the cup. She tried to console herself, thinking, Anh hasn't asked for him today, and reached out a hand to Anh's forehead. "How's your fever?"

The little girl squirmed and thudded her cup down onto the counter. "I'm fine!" She jumped down from the step stool, but the legs skidded sideways from under her. Lan lunged forward, trying to catch her daughter before the impact, but slammed her knees against the wall and oven door, while Anh landed hard onto her tummy.

"Why do you always jump off the stool when I've told you so many times not to?" Lan struck her heel against the oven door. "Aish! Why is everything so crowded in here?"

Anh scrambled back onto her feet and plunged into the space under the dining table, which was squeezed in between the coffee table and kitchen. Lan swooped under the table and found her sneaking pieces of candy from the pocket of her jumpsuit.

"Did you finish your rice?"

"Nope. Don't want to." Anh began coughing, her voice flat and crackly like a seal.

Lan coiled an arm around her fussy daughter. "You're still warm! Take your medicine or you won't play outside later with Ms Truong's boys."

"Yuck. Medicine is gross. Tastes like poop and bitter melon."

Lan checked the time. "Anh!"

Anh glared at her. "You are always yelling. Stop. Yelling. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!"

"Then listen, for once!" Lan said, exasperated and worried that, again, she'd be late for work. And Saturdays were busy at the restaurant. She cringed, picturing the manager chucking menus and shoving the dim sum cart at her.

Anh wriggled and inched her way out of Lan's hold and clambered back into the kitchen. There was a squeak of a cupboard hinge, a protracted clearing of the throat, and then, a sputtering spit. Twice more, Anh produced this horrible – yet familiar – warble, then triumphantly announced, "Mom, I did it!"

Lan hurried into the kitchen. Her daughter's tiny finger pointed like a wand at a dark orange blob of phlegm in the garbage.

"Coughed it up like Daddy," her daughter proclaimed proudly and slapped her chest. Then her eyes widened. "When's he coming home? Is he sleeping at work? I want to show him my throat booger. Can we save it for him? He has to see it." Anh ringed her fingers around her eyes and skated the few squares of lino, pushing up and down on her tippy toes.

"Anh..." Lan whispered with her head hanging low as she headed straight to the bathroom, locking the door between them.

***

In the beginning, it had put Lan at ease to hear him say their zodiac signs were compatible. He'd pull out that yellowing newspaper clipping now and then and point to the faded Vietnamese print: 'Pig and Rabbit: happy relationship in marriage and business.' But when she was pregnant, there were too many things she had to get right, too many things that could throw off their delicate balance. The women in her building scared her: "Do you know zhuo yue zi? You cannot do anything for one month after birth. No washing hair, no brushing teeth, no sex, no stairs, you cannot leave apartment! You must rest. And wrap your belly or you get fat and saggy – men lose interest now," they'd say nonchalantly, or, "Don't eat too much seafood or nut. Your kid get skin rash and allergy –" while they rubbed dollops of steroid cream onto the insides of their children's elbows and the backs of their knees "– and don't let him kiss your belly all the time –" pausing as they stared at her long and hard "– or your kid turn spoiled."

During those nine months, she grew terrified of the seed swelling up inside of her. As he rubbed her belly and murmured sweet words to their child, she wondered – could it hear her thoughts and petty feelings? Did it feel her getting smaller as it was getting bigger? He gushed about how perfect the birth timing was – their child would be born early in the Year of the Rabbit, just like Lan! – while she couldn't understand why her skin prickled and sweated every time she tried to picture a family of three.

And why did they name their daughter Anh? Why did they choose a name that was also an intimate word by which she called to him in Vietnamese?

"Anh..."

Who was she calling? She could no longer tell.

***

While drying her face on a bathroom towel, Lan heard muffled rustling and clanging from the kitchen. Rushing out, she violently stubbed her toe against a corner, but all she thought was that she must've missed hearing him unlock the door. He'd realized his mistake and returned home! In the few seconds it took her to reach the jamb, she fixed her hair and pinched her cheeks.

But nowhere did she find a wiry, stooped man resting an elbow on the counter or washing dishes in the sink. Instead, the tiny pan he'd bought, specifically for Anh, rested on an element, while her little girl swayed on a footstool, reaching an arm out for the heat dial.

"You never listen!" Lan rushed over and snatched her down from the stool – almost dropping her – and in that moment, with barely enough kitchen space to swivel around, she slammed her kneecap against a cupboard handle and felt the bite of tiny teeth in the soft flesh of her forearm. Instinctively, her hand swung tight and hard against her daughter's face, the sound like splitting wood. But Anh had bitten her. Lan withdrew her hand, flattening it across her chest with her throat as dry as paper and her eyes stinging from the tips of a million needles.

"Why... Why do you both hurt me?"

Anh slumped onto the lino with crossed arms, shedding not a single tear. With her left cheek beet red, chin jutting out, and mouth sewn up, she was the spitting image of him. The sudden appearance of his doppelgänger struck a deep worry in Lan: one day, her little girl will also demand a duffle bag with her things and leave without breaking her stride or turning back, even once.

"Look –" Lan said, swinging the fridge door open and pulling out a carton of eggs. "– I can fry an egg, too." But he'd promised Anh that he would teach her to fry an egg today, Saturday, when he didn't work.

A frown slowly melted across Anh's face. "No... No, no, no!" She thrashed her tiny feet and fists against the floor, sobbing as though she'd been chopped in two.

"Why not?" Lan yelled, crying now. "Mine are just as good as his. There's nothing special about him!" She sent the carton crunching to the floor. The shells shattered, leaving the pale edges of their ruptured membranes peeking out from under the cardboard. A stunned silence filled their home. In the presence of the pooling albumen, Anh's siren rose again, her pitch bending and warping, and Lan turned to the unrecognisable, raging child. That small, pink, and angry face, just as it was on the day she was born.

***

Just three days. Three days early. Too early to be a rabbit, but perfect for a tiger. "This is very, very bad," he'd said many times since the day they brought Anh home from the hospital. "She will fight me. A tiger will dominate a pig."

But two weeks earlier – maybe it was her sleep deprivation, her sore feet from standing and crimping dumplings, or her sore hands from chopping onions and hoisting heavy pots off and on the restaurant counters that had caused her to say the wrong words as she'd lain half-awake beside him in the darkness of their bedroom, listening to his usual complaints about Anh – she'd grumbled, "You actually believe all that horoscope stuff? Isn't it silly to take things that far? She's your daughter. You'd let a silly superstition get –"

"Silly? You think this stuff is silly? Okay. You still think that this building facing east and you getting sick all the time are unrelated?" he said, breathing heavily. "And my mother breaking her hip outside our building and the address adding up to four? No? And how much worse –" he was gesturing so wildly that the bed shook under them "– do things need to get before you'll get rid of that stupid bedroom mirror? It's chipped – such bad feng shui! Why are you so cheap? Just buying a small mirror and hanging it in the dining area would increase our luck a thousand-fold, or asking old Mr Lau if we can take that fish tank off his hands –"

"With what money? We barely made rent last month. I can't keep asking Ms Truong to babysit Anh without even cooking her a proper meal in return!"

"This place is bad, bad, bad – we've been fighting ever since Anh was born. You remember the day my boss refused to give me a raise? Tree started getting sick! That bamboo is dying from bad energy!"

"It doesn't get enough sunlight and needs more fertilizer. Stop being so stupid."

He'd gone silent and still. She couldn't even hear him breathe beside her. The room grew lighter as the hour passed from four to five in the morning. "I know," he said. "I shouldn't have quit school. But being a refugee in a white school isn't the easiest thing. I wanted to give us the best chances at being parents. And I failed. I just know it. I'll be a terrible dad."

Lan had tried to stay calm. "But you love her. You can try. She's only three."

"And she's already so strong-willed. She's so smart. It scares me. She copies everything I do. She listens so well and picks things up so fast – I won't be able to keep up. She'll lose respect for me in no time when she learns that her dad barely speaks English, has no high school diploma, and just fixes cars for a living."

"You'll always be her dad. If you care for her, she'll love you, too."

"A tiger child will get along with a rabbit mom," he said. "You two will gang up on me. She'll love you more than me. I know it."

"But she already loves you so much," Lan begged.

***

Lan bolted out of the kitchen and towards the avocado couch. She ripped out its middle cushion and launched it through the open balcony door into the gravel parking lot. It landed, flopping like a fish in the stall where their car should've been. He also took that from her, from them. "You coward!" she screamed.

The base of her throat itched and swelled. Burned. Suddenly, she noticed the blood oozing out of her split toenail like red bean paste spilling out of a bun.

Her mind flitted back to that day, four years ago. Even after the hours of stooping over the grey fabric, hand-stitching every yolk-coloured line and circle on his shirt, with her fingers stinging, the electric joy had persisted inside her.

But this morning, with his raisin mouth dried to a sour pout, he'd said, "I didn't come here for that." Spat those words out between his teeth like the discarded shells of watermelon seeds. So, he'd already made up his mind, then. The shirt he wore had held no significance to him.

The shirt was just a shirt. Five years was all it took to burn each other out.

She knelt beside her daughter now. With trembling arms, she picked her up off the floor, gently folding in her arms and legs, swaddling her like when she'd first brought her home from the hospital. She held her so close she could feel Anh's heart thrumming against her own.

"I'll make you fried eggs. I'll look at all your Lego sculptures for days and days. I'll be more patient, and I'll try not to yell."

Anh opened her puffy eyes. "Mom," she said in a hoarse voice, "I think Daddy is mad at me because I took this..." Her tiny fingers pulled out a long gold necklace from her jumpsuit pocket. At the end of the chain swung his lucky jade pendant. "You tell Daddy I'm sorry?"
The Milestones

Wes Lee

The first night: she hovers, silently asking.

The second night: she turns with love

in her eyes.

The difficult dreams will follow.

Picking out the last clothes: Mary Janes

you'd seen falter on the escalator.

The card you tucked between the white satin lining.

Your brother cutting off his ponytail, placing it

in the coffin.

The first time the words dead and mother

issued from your mouth.

Giving notice at the flat, wanting to run,

wanting to be anywhere else.

Crouching on the bridge outside the city art gallery,

hiding your silent howl.

Not only keeping her plants alive, but making a rainforest

in the new apartment. So tiny. It didn't matter.

So high up. It didn't matter.

The bedroom was so small, the double bed poked

into the kitchen. It didn't matter.

Deleting mum from your phone. The saviour dream:

she appears on the back of your motorbike;

adjusting the speed, averting a head-on collision.

An emperor gum moth on the wall when you wake —

so still, as if it was listening, a familiar.

Swimming with her in a warm turquoise sea —

she's alive but you know something's wrong,

at night when you both are holograms.

The adventure burns off

like the frost, uncovering the hard road.
The Mermaid's Grave

Mariann Evans

I start the story the same way I've started countless others.

"Once upon a time, there was a little girl who befriended a mermaid –"

Catriona starts giggling. I tip her out of my lap and pretend to be upset. "You don't like my stories?"

"Your stories always start the same, Casey."

"They end the same too." I tap her on the nose. "With you going to bed. Now, do you want to hear it or not?"

She gives in, as she always does. I wrap her up in the covers and spin the tale for her. It's an old favourite, one I've told her for years and can recite by heart. I hurry through it this time, putting minimal effort into the voices and descriptions of the mermaid's underwater home. But it works. She's asleep before I reach the end.

I don't know when Aunt Donalda will be home, so I sit in the living room with the television on low. The internet's down again – something to do with the satellite – and there's no signal on my phone. There's not much else I can do while I wait.

There never has been.

I heard someone once describe South Uist like a sea urchin. A prickly exterior with a hidden inner beauty. It's nonsense; over-romanticised hype from people who only see the island's good side. They see beautiful sandy beaches, a close-knit community, a unique indigenous language. But they don't see the storm-force winds every winter, the sky-high cost of living, and a local culture notoriously difficult to infiltrate. A culture resistant to anything new and suspicious of anyone who doesn't fit their mould.

I eat my way through three bags of crisps and watch a rerun of a reality TV show. A key turns in the lock just after nine. Aunt Donalda shoulders her way in like a soldier breaking down a barricade and promptly drops a stack of papers all over the floor. She curses work as we pick everything up. Her face is flushed, and the black pencil framing her eyes has smudged and bled.

"How was Catriona?" she asks at the crescendo of her rant as if she's suddenly remembered she has a daughter.

"She's fine. Her homework's done and she went to bed on time."

Donalda coasts past me to hang up her jacket. "Thanks for this, Casey. I don't know what I'll do without you when you go back to the mainland."

The words sting. I mumble a response and ring for Dad to come and pick me up.

We sit in silence as he navigates the winding roads. I watch the machair slowly slip past me. The darkness is stealing in and covering everything like a mourning shroud, smothering even the smallest light. Something stirs in my gut, and I find myself wishing I could be anywhere in the world but here.

Since moving from Uist to study in Glasgow three years ago, coming 'home' has been a chore. I come back out of duty to my parents, not because I want to. I feel at home in Glasgow now, where the whole city is alive, no matter what the time is. At night, the rhythmic blinking of neon traffic lights becomes the city's heartbeat. The streets pulse and throb with people, every road framed by streetlamps that are never turned off.

The streetlamps turn off at night here.

The next morning, Donalda calls for me to look after Catriona again. After I give her lunch, I wrap her up in her favourite jacket and wellies and we take a walk. It's ten minutes to the nearest beach, a tourist favourite called Culla Bay. Tourists are a common sight, most of them relatives of incomers, swarming like clouds of insects across the sands. The braver ones submerge themselves up to their necks in the ocean. Nobody local would be stupid enough. The currents are unpredictable, and the deeper water can be so cold that I'm convinced it could preserve a dead body.

Catriona takes off the moment her feet touch the white grains. She throws her jacket to the ground, takes off her shoes and starts splashing at the water's edge. Not even the gusts of wind bother her. Like most people born here, she's immune to the cold.

The genes for cold immunity must have skipped me. I watch from a safe distance, shivering as the brisk wind bites through my jacket. The smell of seaweed belched up in clumps along the beach is strong even when there's no sun for it to bake under. The odour clings to my clothes and hair like the grip of a frightened child.

Minutes tick into eternity. I glance at my phone, but no sign of the bars I need to text Erin. I think of her alone in the flat and my heart twists painfully in my chest.

Catriona comes rushing towards me, her cheeks and nose pinched red by the wind's icy fingers. "Why is that lady swimming naked?"

"What are you talking about?"

She points towards the ocean. I prepare a speech in my head about making up silly stories for attention, but I spot something. My words die in my throat.

Someone is moving sleekly through the rolling waves. I can only see her from the waist up. Her body is tiny, no bigger than a child's, but I can see the curve of breasts and hips. She splashes and dives through the unfolding waves with natural ease. I look closer and see long dark hair tangled knotted with seaweed, and skin so pale it looks like it's never seen the heat of the sun. She's bewitching.

I remember Catriona. "Hey! There are kids here!"

My voice feels loud and aggressive on the empty beach, and the woman in the ocean comes to a halt. A chill bursts over my spine that has nothing to do with the bitter cold.

The woman dives under the waves. She doesn't surface again.

Catriona grips my hand. "Where did she go?"

I'm drawn to the edge of the beach. The waves rush up to meet me, and my feet are quickly soaked. Catriona hangs back. I wade out into the steely water until it ripples around my ankles. The waves crash and fall back undisturbed.

"She must have swum away," I say and slosh my way back to shore. "Perhaps she was shy."

Catriona looks uncertain. I squeeze her hand and lead her home, trying to fill her head with stories of princesses and fairy tales. My own thoughts are not so easily quashed. For the rest of the day, I am taunted with images of the mysterious woman, her skin pawed at by the sea's icy fingers.

The next day, I sweet talk Dad into dropping me off at the beach. The sand is chilled as I step onto the shore. There's not a single person on the beach apart from me. Despite it being summer, it's bitterly cold. Any islander worth their salt would know better than to come out here in this temperature. I battle with a moment of clarity. What am I doing out here? Why am I chasing what will probably be nothing?

The ocean is the colour of iron, flecked with white tips of waves. As it falls and recedes, I see a glimmer of something fringed with feathery gills. She emerges from the curve of the waves, her body pushed and pulled by the current, but she doesn't seem distressed. She dives, surfaces and dives again, propelling herself through waves even the strongest of swimmers would be consumed by.

I dash towards the water and soak myself up to the knees. I call out, but my voice is lost on the winds. The force of a wave catches me as I try to move closer. She turns around and disappears with a teasing flash of a smooth, salmon-pink tail.

I stand dumbfounded, the water milling around my legs. I try to rationalise what I've just seen, convince myself I must be wrong. I'm not stupid; I know mermaids don't exist. They're storybook fodder, alongside dragons, elves and magical talking animals.

Back at my parents' house, I negotiate the internet into working and do as much research into mermaids as I can. There isn't much. A few newspaper articles held hostage behind paywalls and adblockers discuss sightings in the Hebrides from the 18th century and conclude they make 'great stories'.

The only thing I can do is keep going back. I make the walk like a pilgrimage, yearning for the easiness of Glasgow where taxis and buses flank every corner. Worries claw at me, whispering traitorously that I won't see her, that I've somehow made the whole thing up.

My legs shake with effort as I stumble onto the sand. For a moment, I think my eyes are playing tricks on me, but there she is. Her head bobs between the foamy waves, closer to the shore this time around.

I head toward the shoreline, my heart beating painfully against my ribcage. The noise of the sand shifting under my feet sounds amplified, and I wince, full of the fear that the slightest sound will send her back to the depths.

She turns and her gaze falls on me. I freeze mid-step like a gun has been trained on me. My breathing comes in shallow gasps. She doesn't move, and eventually, I dare to keep walking. Slow, purposeful steps, so she doesn't take fright.

As soon as my feet touch the water, she cringes like a cat expecting a blow and disappears into the surf.

I persist.

I spend a few days creating a routine, treating her like how you would win the trust of a feral kitten. I move slowly but deliberately, and if I must talk, I keep my voice soft and soothing. She doesn't respond to English words, nor the handful of Gaelic phrases I know, and she doesn't verbalise a thing. I can only show my intentions through body language.

On my fourth day with her, I'm up to my knees in the water when she slides up, slippery like an eel, and comes to a stop only a few feet away. A breath catches in my throat. She's even more amazing up close. Her pale skin looks greyish under this light, smooth and almost rubbery, like a dolphin's. Her nose is small, flattened, with tiny nostrils, but her mouth is large and wide, complete with two rows of sharp teeth.

I can't help but reach out to her, but she lets out a screech that rips through me and leaves my ears ringing. I lose her to the depths of the ocean, and I don't see her again for three days.

My next tactic comes to me during a sleepless night.

I've never liked the ocean, to the point that my old granny used to call me a 'changeling child' in comparison to my water-loving cousins. I dig out an old school swimming costume in unflattering, regulation navy. It's too tight in places, too loose in others, but it's serviceable. Erin would fall on the floor laughing if she saw me.

The mermaid watches as I push myself through the rolling waves, getting used to how my body drags through the water. Once comfortable, I dive under. The world underneath the waves is gloomy and the salt stings at my eyes. When I surface, coughing and spluttering, she's moved closer.

A patch of good weather conspires against me the following week, bringing islanders and tourists alike flocking to the beach. I skulk around the house, jumping every time Mum says she has news or the phone rings, catastrophising that I'll hear reports of a 'fish woman' or something at the local beach. I can't risk her safety. I take my chances only when the beach is quiet and cold.

She's growing bolder, circling me every time I wade into the water, staying longer with every visit. Once, she grabs me and holds my head underwater for a few seconds. Pointed nails dig into my scalp, a surprising amount of power for such a tiny body. When I break away, she dives underwater, and I think I've lost her again, but then her sharp fingers poke and stab at my legs. I squeal and try to shoo her away, but it's only after I go home for the day that I wonder if she was checking to see where my tail was. I must be as unusual to her as she is to me.

I ache to talk to Erin about the mermaid during our weekly phone calls. We talk on Sundays, while my parents go to church, whispers of love in a place that wouldn't accept them. Even in an empty house, I find I can't talk about her, as if simply mentioning her name would endanger her.

With every new week, the mermaid is growing more inquisitive. She tugs at my swimsuit, pulls at my limbs as if she's testing them to see what they do. I talk to her like I would a newborn child, wondering if she'll respond. She's more tactile now, her webbed hands explore my arms and feet, and she allows me to touch her rubbery skin in return. I tickle her stomach and she shrieks with laughter. Her eyes widen and she flails around the water in excitement, like she can't believe that noise came from her.

The time I spend with the mermaid makes being at home almost bearable. She reminds me of a young child, bringing up hazy, happy memories of when Catriona was still too young to talk. A pure and simple way of expression. A happy, lopsided grin, a short grunt of annoyance, a shrill series of shrieks when she's excited. I feel I know her as well as I know Catriona. Her eyes shine brightly with wisdom that I'll never learn, and her joyful smile burns like a beacon for ships lost at sea. Sometimes she stays only minutes. I can go days without seeing the flash of pink that signals her arrival.

It's in one of those dead patches between the mermaid's visits that Catriona phones me, egged on by Aunt Donalda in the background. She murmurs something about not seeing me in a while, and in a moment of weakness, I promise to come and see her.

We spend the morning baking in Donalda's immaculate kitchen, filling the whole house with the smell of vanilla, making tray after tray of soft, chewy cookies. We skip lunch and fill up on cookies, lounging in front of the TV. Catriona is bored by the offerings of afternoon kids' television, so I tell her another story about the little girl who made friends with the mermaid. Enraptured, she begs to know where I get the ideas from. I tap my nose and tell her it's a secret.

Donalda swans in on a break from work, takes one look at the dishes I've left in the sink for later and sends us both out so she can clean up in peace. I continue the story for Catriona as we walk, embellishing it, filling it with all the details I've learned from the mermaid.

We sit, nibbling on more cookies, in the protective shadow of a sand dune. Spits of rain play along the ocean's top and there's a nip in the air. I distract Catriona with another story. But right in the middle of the climax, Catriona sits up a little straighter and lets out a cry.

"Are you listening to me? It's very rude to interrupt."

"But it's her, Casey!"

"Who?"

"The mermaid from your stories!"

My brain stutters and freezes. It couldn't be, could it? I sit up straight and strain my eyes to look across the ocean's steely top. I hope Catriona is making things up, fuelled by sugar and an over-active imagination, but I know in my heart she's telling me the truth.

The mermaid is there, twisting her tiny body through the waves and rolling herself along with the ocean's unfurling fingers. She's reaching for the raindrops that disturb the water, squealing in delight as her hands slip through the shimmering surface.

Catriona takes off running towards the mermaid. I cry out, stagger to my feet and chase her. She's wickedly fast for a young girl and has already made it to the water by the time I've fully comprehended what's happening.

The mermaid hasn't moved from her position, despite Catriona's closeness, and my heart plummets to my stomach. Have I made her too trusting? I scream at Catriona to stay where she is, but she keeps moving. She's up to her waist, only a few feet between her and the mermaid now.

I splash into the water after her, the iciness knocking the breath from my lungs. My heart thuds wildly against my ribcage as I struggle with the current. The words from the story I told earlier echo through my mind: There once was a girl and a friendly mermaid. Catriona isn't afraid. I taught her not to be.

Catriona reaches out for the mermaid, her tiny fingers splayed in an offering of friendship. The mermaid's mouth opens and for a moment, I dare to think things will be okay, but the air fills with the noise of hissing and screeching. I'm too far away to get in between them.

The mermaid lunges for Catriona. Someone is shrieking and I'm not sure if it's me. Catriona's tiny head disappears under the water, the mermaid's hands gripping her long blonde hair. I dive, down, down, down, propelling myself as hard as I can. Under the water, it's impossibly dark and my eyes burn with the effort of keeping them open. I surface, desperate for air, and dive again.

A blotchy shadow ripples several feet below me. It has to be her. It just has to. I dive again. My joints scream with pain, my lungs ache, searing with the lack of oxygen. I tug at the shadow, filled with an inexplicable fear that I could tear her limbs straight from her sockets, but eventually pull her free.

It seems to take an age to reach the surface. When I eventually break the water, it feels like hours have gone by. I gulp air down and drag Catriona to the shore. She's barely conscious. But she's breathing.

I bundle her up in my jacket and rush her home. She goes between trembling and shivering and crying uncontrollably. I keep reminding myself she's here, she's with me on a loop, otherwise I fear my own legs would betray me and I'd crash to the ground and stay there.

Aunt Donalda is on her lunch break when I burst through the door. I look at her eyes, look at Catriona in my arms, and I can't even tell her what's happened.

Donalda rushes away to phone for the ambulance. When she's gone, I beg Catriona not to tell about the mermaid. She looks up at me with fearful eyes as she struggles to breathe. It's like she doesn't even recognise me. I'm not even sure I recognise me. Why am I prioritising the safety of the mermaid, the one that did this to my baby cousin?

I'm told to leave the room when the paramedics come. I'm caught between staying here and going back out to the beach and finding the mermaid. Even though I know what the right thing to do is, I feel drawn back to the beach like I'm under a siren's song. I shiver on the bed in the spare room amongst the clutter and unwanted things. These thoughts don't feel like mine.

Half an hour drips by, like treacle dropping from a spoon. When Donalda eventually appears at the door, she's red-faced and being supported by a paramedic.

"Is she alright?"

I want Donalda to answer me. But it's the paramedic who insists Catriona's going to be fine. He glances at Donalda, a frown tugging at his lips, and I know what he's about to say before he says it.

"Catriona told me a... mermaid did this to her."

He doesn't sound sure, but Donalda's voice is thick, choked with emotion, and full of conviction. "I didn't think there could be any such thing. But she swears it's true."

I stare down at the floor, desperately trying to swallow back tears. I try to convince myself to lie, to tell him that she's making it up, that she's a seven-year-old girl who still believes in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Of course she only imagined it.

"Is it true, Casey?"

I can't answer. She asks me again, louder, and I feel her sharp nails dig into my shoulders. Her face pushes into mine and the tears spill out. I don't know what to do. I don't know if it's better to tell the truth or lie. This is precisely why I never told anyone about the mermaid. People here are suspicious, impulsive, intolerant of anything they can't explain or don't agree with. What would happen to her?

Donalda understands my silence. "I knew it," she spits. "Those people... thank God I'm not with them. I'd tear it apart myself!"

"What? Which people?"

She gives me a look that I can't identify. "Some people heard about what happened to Catriona. They went out looking to see if they can find the mermaid."

People heard about what happened to Catriona. No, Donalda has probably already told them. She would have been on the phone with everyone she knew the minute she discovered Catriona would be okay, probably even before. And if she's told them about a mermaid...

My feet carry me outside. I stumble past Donalda's neighbours, stirred from their homes by the ambulance. I start to run.

As the beach looms, I can hear shouting, the harsh cries punctuating and shattering the frigid air. Fear possesses my body and makes me run blind.

There are men on the beach, carrying shovels, hammers, weapons fashioned from the same tools they use to make their livings. One of them looks my way as I stagger over the shifting sand. His eyes are full of cold hatred. He spits on the ground before moving away.

I know at that moment that I'm too late.

I find her on the sand below the highest of the dunes. The back of her head is bloodied, split open and leaking dark fluid. She's cold to the touch, her pale skin already mottling. In some strange instinct that doesn't belong to me, I want to pick up her lifeless body and cradle her. I don't even hug Catriona like that.

A lone gull caws overhead, splitting the silence of the beach.

I shrug off my jumper and drape it over her body, then move to dig a grave with my bare hands. I know this beach well; I choose somewhere secluded where no one will notice the earth has been disturbed. Despite the freezing air, I am dripping with sweat by the time I've finished. When I lay her inside, I lose what little grip on my composure I have left.

I don't consider myself a religious person, even with the stranglehold Catholicism had on me growing up. All the same, I mutter what snippets of prayer I remember as I layer the earth over her. It seems only right.

I leave the grave unmarked. I've no way of marking her presence. She's nameless. Anonymous in a world she doesn't belong in.

Just as I am.

Flotsam at Dough

John Tinneny

Shoes are returned by the tide,

never in pairs, always puckered and alone,

baby jellyfish lie crumpled and gleaming like lumps

of silicone, by the water's edge. There are seashells

broken by the beaks of seabirds, seeking

soft flesh in their Fibonacci spirals. There's a dead sheep,

mouth open, legs like broken twigs, its wool

gone heavy like sodden cotton. There's a page

from an NHS Scotland notepad, blank, folded,

bone-dry. There are bird-bones

bleached white, like the stones that surround them.

There are the stones that surround them, which

I used to believe were dragon eggs on the verge

of hatching, which I would drop into my pockets until

the tide swept them away like poker chips.

I rattled like the beach itself.

There are no armada ships - they remain

tucked into the seabed, like at Kinnagoe Bay.

There is the odd plough, offered back to the land,

adorned with red rust, encrusted with seaweed.

There are the swimmers, striking out against

the tide, never in pairs, puckered

and alone. There are the swimmers, always

carried back, on the curl of a wave. Carried home.
storm season

Quinn Lui

one way or another, you keep giving up space

in your mouth. now the ghosts are mourning

in a language that was never yours, & they peer

down from a sky cracked open, (tear)staining

the ground dark. we are the same mistake

from different angles: shapes blurred by the dark

but each mistake still reflected. a stranger's hand

tilts your head to the clouds, your spine—

pulled straight by another's old terrors,

your jaw clicking under the jagged stutter of rain.

i always knew the sky's death-rattle would be

our inheritance, but what's the use of a mother

tongue if neither of us know how to say homesick

in it. the storms keep trying to teach you this

isn't about loss, only letting go with grace, but

you spend too much time missing planets

still undiscovered, nostalgic for languages

that have yet to be born. a voice unused is

thunder in a bottle. you collect wine-stained

corks, humming half-remembered

songs that spin in the lonely lights of childhood.

the melodies, worked loose, drape

soft-boned & liquid-heavy into the hollows

of melancholy. i close my mouth around

the cutthroat taste of a thought never born.
Mosaicism

Milagros Lasarte

Quite early on in life, they gave you that little cube you're now holding in your hands. The cube is made of different colours, one for each side, and broken down into pieces that can be shifted around: up and down, left and right.

It came to you all puzzled, a colourful mosaic.

The possession of that cube was unconditional, yet you wondered what you should do with it, and somehow decided to fix the mosaic. Around and around the pieces turned; look how they still turn now. You play with it constantly, deep in focus... but the mosaic remains.

Sometimes the pieces get stuck. All right, enough! you say. You put the cube away and are distracted by something else – life, for instance.

That's when the cube tricks you and the pieces move of their own accord.

Who touched it? Who messed it all up?

No one knows what to say. They look away.

You could get rid of it. You were tempted by that possibility a long while ago. Then comes an unsettling moment, one when you actually manage to forget about the cube, and you're going about your day, talking to friends and so on, when someone asks:

"Where are you from?"

In that moment, you hesitate and find yourself reaching for the cube. You see that only one of the faces is complete: Bright Yellow.

"From Yellow," you then say.

The inquisitive person nods, and you put the cube away.

The conversation evolves, drifting towards all kinds of topics, and the same person turns back to you with a frown on their face.

"Now, wait a second... I thought you said you were from Yellow."

Though certain of the truthfulness of your answer, you take another look at the cube.

Bright Yellow is now speckled with Blue.

"Well, originally, I'm from Yellow. But I've been living my whole life in Blue."

"So, are you also Blue?"

"No, just Yellow."

"But you've never wanted to be Blue?"

***

You always start with Yellow.

You have a claim on it, and you say so proudly... but only when you aren't surrounded by other Yellows. Because then you lose all credibility, and the pieces shift, moving away from each other with each question thrown at you.

Do you have a certificate of birth? How many years of residence can you account for? When is the last time you were there? Have you moved around the country? Have you read all the books by Yellow authors? What about the music?

You mumble a series of rehearsed answers, doubting as you do so their power of conviction.

Hmm, I see... Here's your tourist pass. Mind you, it's VIP – which means when you go there you can blend in, if you don't really speak up. It also means you can wear the Yellow flag during international events, sing the songs, and use our insults. But your privileges end there.

The Yellow side of the cube only stays complete when the inquisitive person has no connection to Yellow and they see it as a distant and exotic land. Their questions don't dig deep enough, so you can twist your answers. You describe Yellow as the Motherland and, charmed by the foreignness and lyricism of the words you choose, the inquisitive person accepts your claim.

***

And if Yellow stands still, you attempt to complete the Red side.

"The Motherland, two generations removed," you say with confidence.

And a crucial side of the cube, too – because while Yellow might be distant and exotic, it is also a third-world country, and having some connections to Red gives you the luxury of being bumped to first class.

The task here, however, is more complex. In order to move a Red piece, you need to prove your attachment. Reds aren't moved by your lyrical descriptions.

Do you speak the language? You understand it fairly well; you can read it, too. That's great, but in Red, we favour actual speech before all else. Can you bring forth any other proof?

"I have the physical traits! I have some of the gestures and manners... I have, I have..."

A theoretical hold.

And if you really want to go down that road, you should also strive to complete the Orange side – remember those other ancestors? One might even say you're more Orange than you are Red, but you would never admit that, not really knowing why; it's just always been done that way in your family. And somehow, you've come to think that Red is better, more 'interesting' – whatever other special label you come up with.

Even so, every time you focus on Red, you are confronted by the unyielding reality that Red is too unstable; and while you're distracted trying to keep that side together, other pieces move around on their own.

***

Blue is complete.

Blue is always encroaching on the rest.

Home address? Blue. How long have you lived there? Sixteen years. I see your education is almost all Blue, too. And your friends, Blue. Your Blue is excellent, no accent at all. Congratulations, the law is on your side! We can give you an official membership.

You push the Blue pieces away, trying to break them up. But they won't turn. They stay glued together for many, many days, until you let go of your obsession to break them up. Then they are mobile once again, because Blue knows that when you're distracted, you let it in without even noticing, and its Blue hold grows stronger.

The cube is made in such way that Yellow and Red can never be whole if Blue is complete. You've tried many different tactics, but none of them work. And you get tired, and you get worn, but nevertheless – you cannot settle for Blue.

It does not feel natural.

Home address? You know it's technically Blue. But in that house, with your parents, siblings, and the dog, too, you go back to Yellow. One small Yellow cluster far away from the actual Motherland that survives. When you're in that house, some Yellow pieces manage to stay together, stable for a while.

We can give you the official membership. But your very Yellow name doesn't make you Blue. And when you mix up all those languages in your head and Blue smiles, calls it funny and cute – with that subtle intonation that is both gentle and patronising – you understand the membership is only second-rate.

So then you say, "Okay, but what I actually want is to complete the Yellow side."

"And what's wrong with the Blue side? Hasn't Blue given you so much?"

You sigh and put the cube back in your pocket.

***

Some other days, you remember there is also a Green side to the cube, so you focus your attention there – and the pieces seem to move towards you, merging together, becoming one with such ease that you wonder, why ever bother with the other colours?

You will never be Green, but you know that already. You don't lay a claim to it, and that makes it all the more comforting. In Green, you're no fraud. You're just someone who likes the language and the culture. You have fun with Green, and it never questions, never judges. Never asks you to choose. So you put the cube with its completed Green side on a shelf, where everyone can see, and you marvel at just how stable it is.

Stable enough for a new home address?

We thank you for your interest! Green can offer you a home, but we will need to see valid documentation: work contract, prosper bank account, insurance... In short, you must guarantee you won't be a burden to us.

***

Finally, there comes a sleepless and agitated night.

The cube on the shelf is buzzing, and you know that the pieces are moving – BlueYellowRedGreenOrange struggling with each other. You jump up and grab that tyrannical cube. Once again, you're tempted to throw it away. No, you want to smash it to pieces. Yet, as you hold it in your hands and realise your fingers are already moving, mechanically, to complete one of the sides – whichever, so that the cube stops buzzing – you wonder what might happen if you reversed the movement.

Up to Yellow into Blue then down to Red. And to the side with Orange, then back up towards Green and – what about those little White pieces you never really cared about?

Join White? We have no kind of membership or tourist pass... You can stay if you want. Really, we're just here to complete the mosaic, make it visually coherent. Why, the cube would never stand without a little touch of white. Where have you ever seen a single-colour mosaic?
Where the Heart is

Lola Gaztañaga Baggen

"I just want to go home," I say, almost believing it. The half-whispered half-truth hangs in the air, slides off of the damp tiles of the wall. Mildew and bleach, discarded tissues with lipstick stains and torn fragments of tampon wrappers – and me, staring back at me with thin lips and dark circles under my eyes. I need to go home, have a shower, get some sleep. It's etched into every enlarged pore of my face, imbedded in the dirt under my nails.

It makes for an odd sanctuary, with its broken stalls and cracked mirrors, but it is what it is. I fled here, wanting to escape the loud music and sweaty mingling of the club I had fled to earlier. An attempt to escape twice over; but escape isn't real. The music followed me into the bathroom and it throbs up through the tiles, dancing up my legs and turning my stomach before it digs its nasty little nails into my skull and worsens the headache that's already there.

"I need to go home," I repeat, louder now. Repetition makes truth – or conviction, anyway. It is true. It's three in the morning, and I have work tomorrow. Things to do, places to be.

My eyes look like the empty bookcase in our – my bedroom. Cavernous. Keats and Shelley and Blake, all gone without a trace.

I don't want to see me staring back at me anymore, so I press my eyes shut. Focus on my breathing, the damp moisture built up on the back of my neck, the itchy pinching around my waist where my new skirt cuts off circulation. My feet are killing me. I shouldn't have worn these stupid shoes, who am I trying to impress anyway? The music still throbs, and my head throbs back at it gladly, to let me know that even if my heart's a traitor and my chest as empty as his bookcase, at least one of my organs is still in its place.

"Come on," I grumble, unmoving still. I hate this place, but I think of turning the key, and the darkness and its accompanying silence in response to my tentative 'Hello', and placing my shoes on the rack next to nothing but my own sneakers, and I can't tear myself away from the fluorescently lit sink. "Time to head home."

If I pretend that word still means something, I almost believe it.
Are We Having Fun Yet?

Becca McGilloway

The girl I used to be sleeps

in my closet surrounded

by vhs tapes. I spin

the bottle and kiss her

goodbye. I vow to a

voodoo doll

In a year I'll wake up

made of nothing.

The girl I used to be braids

her hair and licks frosting

off cake while I

worship

a body withering.

She stays for years

to see if I come

back and rescue her from

a lifetime of waiting.

But one day I open

the closet to a pile

of cartilage and cassettes.
Some Kind of Love

Ethel Maqeda

She saw him again. Not a fleeting glance, an imagined likeness or an awareness of a presence, here one instant and gone the next. He was here, and she was looking at him, afraid to blink.

He was wearing the same scuffed, brown leather jacket. Something in the way his right shoulder hung lopsided so that his jacket appeared uneven at the elasticated hem gave him a gentleness negated by his hulking size, the angry, manly face and the woolly, untamed beard that framed his face. Together with the khaki sportie on his head, the faded, blue jeans and the white takkies, he looked artistic, like he had been put together for a show – perfect, despite the droop in his shoulder, to play Shaka in a film or a play.

She was sure she had seen him, known him, before here, before Johannesburg. Although it had been years since she left home, she often saw bits of the people she had known back then on other people's faces, her aunt's soft brown eyes on the cigarette seller at the entrance to the building where she lived, her best friend Tinaye's gummy smile on the little brat next door, a former neighbour's scowl on the metro ticket seller. And it was the same with him. He was one of those people whose bits she saw in the faces of strangers, unforgettable, yet she couldn't remember where and how their paths had crossed. It had bothered her for days. Her memories were usually perfect; each one possessing an intense clarity, with every moment, even the ones meant for forgetting, rendered in sound and colour.

The first time she saw him, she'd almost greeted him. It was a moody day when the clouds seemed to run an endless race across the sky, leaving the sun to make furtive appearances. She was huddled up against the wind, sometimes bringing up the collar of the coat to shield her eyes against a sudden gust of wind. It was the instant she lifted her eyes after one such gust had subsided that she saw him. He was leaving an ATM outside her local Pick n Pay as she joined the queue behind him. He had glanced back for just an instant, the few seconds that everyone does, unbidden, as they leave an ATM. He was dark, very dark and handsome, with mesmerisingly big eyes, bushy, shapely brows and full lips. He looked so familiar – like a long-lost relative, an old school-friend, or maybe even a much-loved celebrity. She'd smiled but he'd already walked off.

She had searched through all the chapters of her life – work, jobs, friends' boyfriends – and decided that, despite the niggling conviction that she knew him more personally, she had probably actually just seen him on TV, in one of the chains of soaps she had taken to watching. Isidingo at six, Scandal! at seven thirty, Generations at eight, Muvhango at nine, and so on until it was time to go to bed. South African TV was one of the things she liked about being here. Back home there was only one station: ZBC, 'your family favourite'.

She was sitting in Nando's at Ghandi Square across the street from her office on Rissik Street, trying to organise her handbag. She was getting better at it – taking her jacket off first, then the scarf, before sitting down to empty the contents onto the table. She would then carefully repack everything again, making sure to discard any rubbish, sweet wrappers, bits of unfinished chocolate bars, receipts, and other bits of paper she didn't remember having. She would place the useful stuff back in, neatly so nothing was out of place – the diary against the back inner-pocket, the coins in a little wallet in a different inner pocket, the pens inside the penholders and the wallet in the main compartment, next to the diary. She would then order a coffee and sit watching the street outside, content that she had everything under control.

It was when she stood up to go and throw the rubbish in the bin that she caught sight of him again. He was crossing the street towards the entrance. Her heart quickened as she watched his sure-footed stride. When he got to the entrance, however, he turned left to walk down the pavement. He was going to disappear again, like before, but then he turned his head. He must have sensed her watching him. As he did, their eyes met for the briefest of moments. He did a double take and came to a sudden stop. He stepped back towards the entrance – a smile working its way from his lips across the deep, craggy ridges on his cheeks until it reached the eyes.

Then it happened. In that moment when he flashed his white teeth, she remembered! It was as though they had woken from the same dream, at the same time. His stare went dead cold. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to move.

It was a breezy evening in February in 2008. She was walking home from work, past Nehanda's tree on Josiah Tongogara Avenue, letting herself be hypnotised by the pongy smell of the Jacaranda flowers carpeting the path. The Santana had come to a sudden stop just in front of her, making her jump. She remembered the commotion, shouts, the taunts, and being pushed roughly into the back of the vehicle. There were other people in the back. A girl, not more than twelve, crouched in the corner, sobbing softly, two men huddled together in the other corner, and two large women, wielding their Bibles like shields. They didn't look up when she came in. And the man with the familiar face was there, with two others. He was there asking questions with no answers – did she not know that women were not to walk unaccompanied in the avenues? Did she not know that loitering for purposes of prostitution was a crime? Was she coming from a secret meeting? Why was she not at home cooking for her husband and children like all other respectful mothers and wives? Was she coming from campaigning for the opposition? It was that dizzying smile he kept fixed on his face while he forced a rough object into her that had survived, deeply buried under the other faces.

She didn't know what had become of the others. People say everyone has their moment when they decide the time has come. Hers had come a few mornings later, as she was preparing the warm saltwater bath to sit in. People don't go to the hospital with such wounds. There would be too many looks of pity and disgust. And the questions – the questions would be unanswerable. Whenever she tried to convince herself to go, she could not imagine going past the desk clerk. She would have to walk up and say she needed to be seen to. The desk clerk would ask what the problem was to determine the urgency of her ailment. She didn't have a name, a description, for what they had done to her, so she resorted to a home remedy instead, hoping that she wouldn't contract an infection and that she hadn't contracted anything deadlier already. After a week, when she could walk without wincing, she boarded a bus to the border, not sure what her plan was and where she would go once across. All she knew was her salvation was across the Limpopo.

She had almost added that encounter to the other memories one should let go, reminding herself as she often did that some things are best left forgotten. She could make a new life for herself here. She could bury the things that needed burying here, in Jozi; others before and after her had done it. They would call her alien, immigrant, refugee, kwerekwere, but she would get a job and make new friends. She would be a house maid, a live-in with a white family. It would be safer; she wouldn't meet a lot of people from back home then. First, she would convince the madam that she wasn't a town black person. She would be okay if the madam thought she was a country bumpkin, eager to learn. She would let the madam explain everything – This is where you switch on the iron. First you must make sure there's water in the tank. The microwave is for warming food only, hey; we use the stove for cooking. Separate all the whites first and only use the 'rapid wash'. It wouldn't do to tell madam not to worry, that she used to have a Philips steam generator iron and a four-in-one inverter microwave oven. She would wear the mask, just smile and say, "Thank you, madam," and try to bury all the things that should remain buried, somewhere deep within the deepest recesses of her being. It had worked for years, until this morning. With hands full of bits of rubbish from her handbag, she stood inside Nando's at Ghandi Square, staring at her worst nightmare standing on the other side of the glass, come back to life in this place of new beginnings.
A poem for my hometown

Melanie Maclennan

That bird is

shapeless,

and most people

who know it know

that it has been choked

silent—

The meaty rag of its body

has been wrung of dreams,

and the sensible ones step

over it.

If there is still a song

inside of that chest,

I do not think I want

to hear it.

The bird stutters and

twists

like a blind man cleaning

the pus from his eyes,

or a deaf woman

gutting

her tongue for poetry.

Mild, matted wings

thrash

against their fading place,

never to be

seen or touched.

Aching bird,

I will only look back

on the hard days

when my new life

starts to choke me.

Throbbing bird,

wingless, weeping town,

how does anyone

survive you whole?

You are the child's coffin.

You are where young dreams go to rest.

You are the reason I cannot sleep at night

and the reason I cannot wake up

in the morning.

Toothless bird,

bloody bird,

hungry, rattling

deathless bird,

I heard it somewhere, once,

that you cannot kill a thing

that is already dead.

Stained bird, silent bird,

you have been

breathless

all along.

I will rise from you

and into a white, chalky sun.
The Fleeting Tale of Demeter

Lucy Rose

What does the word 'childhood' mean to you? It's my twenty-eighth birthday today, and I wanted a small moment to reflect as I blow out my candles. I look around the room at the happy and laughing faces, and I ask myself again, what does the word 'childhood' mean to you? To most, it means hazy memories of warm, flickering birthday candles, bright fuchsia wax dripping down onto a rich, icing-smothered chocolate cake, cherries perfectly balanced on top. I imagine it's like hearing the soft echo of your parents sweetly singing 'Happy Birthday' as your cake is brought forth, and between you, the cake, and your family is a tower of gifts, arranged seemingly all too well, all the shines and colours of the paper bouncing off the candlelight and the ribbons coiling down the perfectly wrapped folds and edges.

I don't remember an awful lot from my childhood. I have strange and obscure flashes of partial images. Moments. Fragments. Broken glass reflecting lights in abstract rainbows. Fragments that aren't remotely close to the window it once was. I know for certain that I've no memories of cherries and cakes and hardly any of warm and safe candlelight.

I'm reminded by strangers with conviction that life is a gift. That it must be cherished and that I must let go of the past. Let go, knowing still that something cruel and strange happened to me. And no matter what hazy memory my childhood presents, it's fleeting. My account is by no means a fact. Memory has emotion, and emotion can twist things into entirely new creations.

With each breath I take and each step I make, I know there is something dark living inside my soul. The darkness is the child that never really got a childhood. It's every single wicked act that has ever used my life as a stage to perform or as a canvas to paint.

Sometimes I look back at old photographs; I ponder my eyes and what secrets they harbour. It always makes me wonder how exactly it is I became who I am? How did I go from being an innocent and imaginative child to someone who can scarcely see any sunlight, who can't remember what daylight feels like?

What does the word 'childhood' mean to you? To me, it means surviving. And that is why you will never know my name, my name shouldn't be spoken, not until the others, too, are recognised. I am one of many who live in secrets and shadows because of what happened. My voice isn't just one – it's millions. Millions of children crying out for neglectful and abusive parents. So listen to my words carefully, because I'll only say them once.

"It's been fifteen months," Carina speaks with a soft and gentle whisper, her face adorning mine with a forgiving glow. I feel an anxious wave wash over me, clutching my heavy heartbeat in its grasp. All I want to do in that moment is fiddle. I let my fingers nervously wrestle with each other. How had it been fifteen months? I knew it had been a long time, but it just seems to slip through my fingers these days.

"I know." I bow my head and let the words fall out of my mouth.

"It takes time; you've been in stage one a while, but we'll get you there." Carina isn't like other therapists. She doesn't wear stuffy jumpers, and her hair isn't pulled back with one of those claw clips. She's young, wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and skinny jeans, with the comforting touch of polka-dot socks and Converse. I can't quite explain our relationship, if I'm honest. It's strictly professional, and yet she knows me better than any other living soul on the planet. She knows things about me no one else does and sees me more clearly than anyone ever will. Who'd have known that after an hour a week for fifteen months she'd have had me spill my every secret. Or at least most of them. Things I've never spoken out loud. As a result, she's been able to give me a vague diagnosis, but she's also advised me not to lean on it too much. "Your trauma doesn't define you; you are made up of many things." This is a fact she will remind me of constantly. Part of me believes her, but just like everyone else in my life, she sees something in me that I don't. I see a great, big, empty nothing. My soul doesn't carry anything with it, just this overwhelming darkness. I'm cracking and heaving glass, and the splits and cracks are growing more and more with each day.

This is my favourite hour of the week. Sometimes I use it to talk about nothing, and sometimes I actually have to face all the moments. Mostly the former. Avoidance feels good; it feels like I have control. I don't really remember anything anyway.

I mostly go through phases. The first phase is letting the memories in and letting myself be scared of them. In this phase, I am miserable. I want nothing more than to let myself swing from a rope noose, knowing that some of the terror that has simmered inside me will soon fade once my heart stops beating. Other times, I don't know anything; I struggle to grasp onto the clearest reality, and I slip into my agoraphobic tendencies. Most of the time, all I can say is that I truly don't know anything, and maybe it's best that I don't. If what happened was honestly so awful, maybe I'm better off without.

I get this a lot. Mental health is always about trauma, though not everyone who has mental health issues is a trauma victim. I'll let you in on something: trauma victims are the rejects and result of an imperfect society. We are everything ugly tainting a vain, hierarchical complexion. We are the lost souls. We walk through life, having been told to get on and repress as hard as we can, and then we are left with an inner warfare so fierce it kills us. We are not spoken of, and when we try to part our lips and speak, we are promptly silenced. That's only moments before our lips are sewn shut. Even our inner need to want to silence ourselves is somehow normal because we just want to be normal and we've been told so often to stay quiet by our abusers. So yes, it feels normal to be quiet. Keep calm and carry on. Sometimes our lips are sewn shut by the masses, a crowd roaring of how we're having withdrawal symptoms and attention is our drug. Then there are times our lips are neatly crocheted by our abusers, with flowers lining the seams. That's when you're in trouble; once your sweet mind has been taken back by the person who laced it with lies in the first place, you're surely done. Sever those threads at all costs.

My mother was named after the goddess Demeter, and at a first glance of the cleverly written myth, I understand why. Everyone loves Demeta. Everyone admires Demeta. She is the epitome of the matriarch. She is giving, she is kind, she is passionate, she is creative, and she is maternal. She is the perfect mother. She'd do anything to protect her precious daughter. She'd even kill.

But growing up with a mother like Demeter makes you see the myth a little differently. I only see a wicked woman acting on her darkest and most controlling impulses. Not a perfect mother, but a perfect monster, taking her children and turning them into swords. She'd use them as a weapon to harm and hurt and then ask them both to make peace. I see a woman who would do absolutely anything to save herself, even if it meant her burying her children or anyone else for that matter.

My memories are like the pieces of a jigsaw, all mixed up and none of them seem to fit. I've built around the edges and found the corner pieces, but there still isn't a clear picture to hang on to.

But despite that, I remember a certain day very well, the day I challenged my mum.

I was fourteen. I was a bad child, constantly acting out, but nobody questioned anything. No one questioned my ill-fitting clothes or my sunken eyes. Nobody questioned why it was that my twin brother was so happy to lay black and blue bruises on my skin. No one questioned anything. As a child, I was too imperfect to acknowledge and too average to be taken seriously as a student at school. So, I went unnoticed. Even though something inside me knew I was better than that and deserved to be noticed and deserved to speak, rebelling against the goddess Demeter would come at a cost, one I hoped was worth paying.

I was fourteen – a child when I think back on it now. But at the time, it seemed strangely normal, and I didn't feel like a child. I came out of my small attic room, carefully stealing a glance of the lock on the outside of my door and the scratches on the inside from where I'd tried to escape, and wandered into my mother's beautifully decorated and spacious suite. She was a very sexual woman; paintings she'd inked smothered the walls. I was exposed to all sorts of erotic illustrations, but what I remember clearly are the images of women wearing tight lingerie, whips clenched in their fists. A dominatrix in her lair, always teaching me that feminism is about your body and not about the content of your character. Thankfully, I came to learn the true meaning of feminism in my later years and found great comfort in knowing I was worthy as a woman and as a person.

But in order to learn that, I first had to be extricated from Demeter, from her suite – her lair; we had only had a minor disagreement, but what began as something small ended in me being left in the street with only the clothes on my back. Although I didn't realise it at the time, that was truly the beginning of my life. I had been told so frequently that no one else would love me like she did and that no one would protect me the way she did. It was at that point that I had been given a choice. I let the countryside air brush my skin where bruises had formed and I pondered where my life would go next, where I would take it. I looked back at the house, the place I had called home for so long, and I wondered what would happen if I knelt on the doorstep and begged for forgiveness, pleading to be let back in and locked into that small room.

But before I could even finish letting that scenario play out in my head, my legs started moving. They walked down the country road, and that was that.

The next few years were cold and scary; I felt very alone for most of it. What I didn't realise at the time of my leaving was that Demeter was like a drug to me. I was experiencing withdrawal from her. I'd been told so many times that I couldn't survive without her, and so I believed it. My body believed it.

"Have you been trying the exercises?" Carina asks me. Her voice is firm, she knows full well that I haven't, but she asks me anyway, giving me the benefit of the doubt. More than I deserve.

"Once or twice," I fib.

I see the corners of her mouth tighten as she lets out a small sigh. "And how's that going?" She lets me carry on with my deceit.

"Fine," I say, looking at my shoes. Anything but those eyes – I hate them because they coax the truth out of me, one way or another. But today, it isn't my words that give me away; it's my expression. I feel it when it changes.

"You have to work on the exercises. It won't work to begin with, but after a few weeks, you'll start to see progress."

I want to believe her, I do... But I don't.

"I..." I can't bring myself to finish that sentence. The words won't even fully cross my mind, although I'm well aware of their intent. They stop at the word 'I', and then everything else is just a redacted mess.

"Things do get better." Like small waves of comfort. The only comfort I'll ever really receive in this life. "People come back from this."

I don't see how. It's crippling when I let the monsters back in, when I let the memories try to mark out their territory in my brain. It's hell. That can't possibly have happened to me, I think. It's like I'm surrounded by an electric fence: outside of it, hiding in the darkness, are the monsters, and initially I can't hear or see them, but eventually the buzzing that once drowned them out starts to waver. I start to hear snippets. I don't like sleeping; their voices and shapes are particularly vivid in my dreams. Strange, obscure, and twisted images that I don't really know how to address or approach. A hybrid of fears and thoughts that build a creature I have to face. What should be a beautiful porcelain face with blonde hair and bright green eyes is a twisted and disfigured face with sunken hollows and melting cheeks. It's horrifying as her skin falls from her face and she chases me through long, dark country roads.

"I know it's hard," Carina says, pulling me back.

"I can't," I finally say, finding words to replace the ones I truly wanted to let slip out.

"In time, you will be able to," she says, and I fall silent again. "You feel violated – you were violated – and dealing with that is difficult." Carina's voice is calming, keeping me pinned down to Earth, keeping me safe. A human shield for my self-destructive ways. "You need to do the exercises. They will teach your body that you are in control. It will help."

Of course, she's right. But it's hard work. It doesn't sound it, but it is.

The exercise involves me standing in front of my partner, David, and staring at him. His eyes look into mine. Eyes I once sought refuge in but now am scared to even breathe near. David is the purest soul on this earth; he's kind and loving, but he doesn't understand my brain. He doesn't understand the way it loudly and anxiously ticks and tocks. He only wants to help, but I'm scared to let him in. He extends his arm, his fingers, and grazes my elbow.

"Green," I say. That's what I'm supposed to say when I feel comfortable with where he touches me. His soft smile spreads across his face. I do the same, lightly touching his elbow. His hands then graze up my arm and rest on my shoulder. I feel a twinge in my head. I just want to squeeze my eyes shut tight. "Amber." I can feel myself starting to twitch.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

And thus, the process repeats until I'm not an anxious mess. But it's all too triggering.

"It's hard," I say, wanting to let tears and cries slip from my eyes and lips. But I don't. I grit my teeth and hold back.

"You're in a safe space. From the minute you walked away from that woman, you were safe. Your body doesn't quite believe it yet, but you are," Carina says. I nod, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to imagine nice, soft things. A friendly cat, calm ocean waves, a flickering birthday candle. But none of it works, my breathing spikes. "Many things happened to you in that house. Ambiguous things. Things you don't fully understand. But you will, just take it slow. This is one step at a time."

I let my breathing settle for a moment, just trying to catch my breath. "I just want to be normal. I want to be able just to cuddle or have sex with my boyfriend, and I just can't." What I say comes out in a mess of anxiety and frustration.

"Is that true?" she says. Every word that's pulled from her mouth is slow. I take a minute or two to respond.

"I don't want to have sex with anyone. I don't want anyone to touch me." I pause, thinking about how to say what I want to say. "But I envy that intimacy that others have. That I can never have." This is every session of my therapy: trying to get to the bottom of whatever strange and twisted things have happened to me until I feel safe, until I've found a home inside myself.

There is darkness in me. I know it. I've felt it. The images that my brain has conjured up to frighten me in the dark speak louder than any words ever written on paper. There is a sad truth about this fleeting tale, and it is that I don't think I'll ever really understand what happened to me, but I will still feel it. Even now, I feel it crawling across my body like thousands of fidgeting mites. Years of neglect and abuse fumbled into a strange and disgusting hybrid of fears and monsters. So I ask myself again, what does the word 'childhood' mean to you? I'd like to say that, looking back, I can move on from what happened to me. I'd like to say that I can look past the dark haze veiling everything. But I can't. And I won't.

But what I can do is this: I can make new memories, replace the yearning for birthday candles and love with friends who will give me both without condition.

That's my wish this year. Because I know that bad people will continue to do bad things. So my wish is that children like me can find friends like mine. All I've ever wanted is to feel warmth and love, and I got lost looking for it in a place where it didn't exist.

This is my new family. This is love. This is home. I look around at the proud and smiling faces surrounding me, lit only by the small but ethereal candlelight. The people who matter are here with me now, spending this day celebrating my life, celebrating the fact that I've managed to survive another awful year on this planet. But at least 'my awful' doesn't exist in a dream world of nightmares anymore. 'My awful' exists in a place far superior; it exists in a hard and tiresome recovery.

So I blow out my warm candles.

I am home.
The Bursting of the Dam

Claire Hinchliffe

"What? Why?"

The solicitor, Mr Friedman, took off his glasses and placed them carefully onto a pile of papers. For a few seconds he left his hand there, lightly resting on the black rims. He gazed intently downwards, expression difficult to decipher.

Bernard wanted to ask how much money such wasted time would cost. Fifty pounds? Two hundred?

Finally, Mr Friedman looked up and moved his mouth into a long line. "It's what most people do."

"Why?" Bernard asked again. Perhaps this was an inadequate solicitor's office, though it looked large and impressive enough, and it was where mother had left her will.

Already it was three minutes to eleven.

Mr Friedman shrugged. "To show respect? To celebrate the life of –" he rubbed his nose "– your mother. Your dear mother, Ann." Mum used to use the word 'dear' to mean expensive... holidays abroad are too dear... the high street shops are too dear... cafes are dear... "Some people don't feel up to speaking, so they ask a funeral director or vicar – sometimes a friend – to speak for them."

"But there's always speeches?" Bernard sought clarity. "It's not possible to simply burn the body and sign the forms?" He watched Mr Friedman's eye twitch. "After paying, obviously." The twitch increased in speed, so much the solicitor's eye almost closed. Bernard guessed at the cause. "Cremate. I mean cremate, not burn, though the process is the same. That's the whole purpose of the funeral, surely? To dispose of the body safely in environmentally friendly manner." He beamed, expecting gratitude for his knowledge, gained from reading an article about cremation on the flight to the UK. Instead, Mr Friedman winced.

It was not news that people could be such sentimental fools as to quibble about the niceties of words like 'burn' and 'cremate', only surprising that a solicitor would do so.

"Will this be your first funeral, Bernard?"

"Yes," Bernard fired.

"Ah. Is there anyone you want to invite?"

"No." He didn't have time for meaningless ceremonies and get-togethers. Occasionally he would watch the New Year fireworks on TV, enjoying being part of the celebrations, if not the human race. "I couldn't attend Father's. I was working on a crucial stage of my last dam."

"Oh. Well I expect you've seen some on films and such?"

It was past eleven. At twelve, Bernard intended on calling in at The Stag's Inn on Winter Street, a pub he'd frequented rather a lot during his student years. It would be absurdly funny if they still served the same menu. Back in the day, every Friday the Environmental Engineering department would hog the same table, sometimes staying until two p.m. He sighed. "Can we get a move on? I've a lot to do."

"Of course. If you like, I can arrange everything. Your mother left instructions to –"

"You can? Well, why didn't you say so? Please, go ahead. Do you require my signature?"

"She wanted a few songs, and a poem. I've already placed notification in the newspapers, and invited family and friends. Don't you want to –?"

"No." Bernard waved his hand. "I'm sure whatever she asked for is fine. It's not like she'll care anyway, is it?" He laughed, to cover an uncomfortable acid reflux sensation.

Mr Friedman began passing his glasses from one hand to the other, rather too quickly for safety or sanity.

"You'll break them," Bernard warned. If they got through in the next few minutes, there might be time to check out if the old university bookshop was still there. Nostalgia had no place in the real world of dams and equations; still he wouldn't mind a stroll down Memory Lane. Would the science book section still smell of vinegar? "So – is that everything? Funeral at ten and I can leave the house to you to sort? Yes?"

"Bernard?" Mr Friedman suddenly stood up and moved around the desk to sit in the chair closest. "Why don't we postpone a week, instead of tomorrow? Take a few days to think about what's happened. I can easily change the funeral date, now that you're here. People would understand. It's just that you didn't let me know you were coming." He coughed. "Some people find it takes a few days for what's happened to sink in." He nodded meaningfully.

Bernard was perplexed. "What does? Sink?"

"Your mum dying." For some inexplicable reason, Mr Friedman whispered instead of speaking at a more usual volume. "She's gone, my dear." To Bernard's horror, the solicitor's eye glistened and a tear dripped down his face, running through the crags and tunnels of his face like water down a valley.

"Oh, there's no need for that. I'm a grown-up and anyway I hadn't seen her in years." Five years and four months. The last time Mum came to the USA; Bernard was sick of her within ten minutes of the plane arriving. He spent the rest of the two weeks trying to avoid her by going to work even though he'd booked leave. He wasn't proud of it. After she went home, he'd felt guilty and a bit strange, yet she'd said it was a wonderful time and he was to have a good life and be happy. So, it was really OK. "I'm sure your customers respond favourably if you pretend to care, but it's not necessary for me. You didn't know her, after all."

"I did," Mr Friedman smiled. "I –" His lip wobbled.

Bernard stood up quickly and opened the door, away from the histrionics. "Well. I have some important things to do today so I won't take up any more of your valuable time." Expensive time, though Mum had pre-paid her funeral and arrangements and the proceeds of the house would more than cover costs. "You'll call me if there's anything? Otherwise I'll see you at the funeral."

He looked back.

Mr Friedman was wiping his eyes and shaking his head. When he spoke, his voice sounded raspy and painful. "Yes. Is there anything you want to know? Anything at all?"

"Yes!" Bernard stepped back inside the room. Perhaps something could be saved from the day.

"Yes? Anything. I'd – I'd love to help. I'd like –"

"Do you know if The Stag's Inn on Winter Street still does the giant Yorkshire pudding?" Bernard couldn't help but laugh. "I have such good memories of that place!"

***

"Why is there no giant Yorkshire pudding – gravy and meat inside? Normally lamb but occasionally beef?" Bernard smiled encouragingly. He brimmed with enthusiasm at being here in the UK. He wanted to tell her, I used to come here! Always sat in that green leather chair by the window. I was the brightest and most promising young man; always a joke. Who knew? Maybe some relic of his youthful days remained here, ingrained into the very beams. The walls were covered with photographs of boozy nights; people drinking blue drinks. If he looked hard enough, perhaps there would be one of him, eighteen years old. The more Bernard craned his neck, the surer he became.

"What d'you want?"

"A giant Yorkshire pudding. Always soggy carrots!" He laughed loudly, fully expecting her to join in, to understand that he was an important part of the pub's history. "Look again. I'm sure you'll find they're on the menu." Half expecting old friends to pop out from behind the stone pillars. Surprise! We knew you were coming.

She snapped her mouth open and shut in rapid bursts of grotesquery. After a brief interlude thinking about lizards, Bernard deduced she was chewing gum. Blowing bubbles in his face, both rude and unprofessional. Disrespectful. The old barmaid, Shirley, never would have done that. Always polite, agreeing quietly as he'd informed her about the day's lectures.

"Burgers," the girl suddenly growled, somewhat alarmingly.

Bernard was not to be outdone, not here where he had once been great. "Giant Yorkshire puddings. Crisp on the outside, moist inside with gravy and onions." His mouth watered and his stomach rumbled as if he hadn't eaten in days. It was inconceivable that his desire would not be met. "If you please."

"Burgers," she insisted, "wiv or wivart cheese. Fries."

Bernard was used to getting his own way. He spoke louder and more slowly. "No Yorkshire puddings at all?"

The girl sighed deeply. "Nope."

"Could you ask the manager?"

"Look! I said no. It's burger or nothing."

The place had gone downhill, slipped into a sad demise. Instead of earnest theory-talking young men, the room was more or less empty. Some tables hadn't even been cleared. Dust and flies were everywhere. Bernard's stomach lurched. "Nothing, then. Do you know, I used to –" But she had already turned away, not interested in his fascinating tales such as the three-legged race of '79, or the great house pub quiz. Bernard took one last look around; still hoping to see something – anything – he recognised. The flashing slot machines seemed to mock his memories of post-lecture drinks and heated discussions when nothing was more important than proving a point. And of course, Bernard always had. He'd chased that point until there was nothing left to say – no final evidence or statistics to knock him off his spot as best student in the year.

Wounded, he stepped outside, almost walking into a large group of young people. The street appeared to be populated by similar clumps of students milling around squealing. Up and down as far as he could see, they stood, carrying backpacks and wearing clothing surely meant for much younger children. They drew back as if he was the one acting strangely. Bernard hurried through without looking for the bookshop.

***

Even before reaching the front door a growing sense of unease and irritation had taken root. He considered driving straight past. Not bothering. Leaving the irksome task of sorting until tomorrow and instead finding a nice hotel, perhaps one that could offer giant Yorkshire puddings.

He parked up in front of the garage – Father's garage – and looked away from the mess of the garden. The grass hadn't been cut for a long time. There were crisp packets and litter strewn in the grass and hedges. Some ignorant passer-by had thrown the wrappings of a fish and chips meal into the square and there it remained, waiting for him to pick it up. Rising irritation made him open the car door a little too roughly. Why ever had Mum let it get into such a state? Even in winter she used to have neat rows of bushes and flowers.

He locked up and stood in front of the door, key in hand. The stone owl was still there, as it had been for at least forty years. Weathered, splattered with bird droppings, but still there. Bernard felt a strange gratitude that something had not changed.

Then he noticed other things he hadn't thought about in years – the bird feeder shaped like a huge mushroom – lavender bushes – rows of pots. As a young child, he had planted sunflower seeds, nursing them carefully as they sprouted up past his knees, his waist and finally right up past his head and towards the sky.

He poked the key into the lock firmly, and stepped into the house, assuring himself that Mr Friedman had already been here and cleared away anything horrible.

The smell.

He'd forgotten that smell, same as he'd forgotten Owley. It was the aroma of lemons, eucalyptus oil burners, a soothing voice. Of Christmas morning, winter snow and hot chocolate. It was the smell of Mum.

Bernard swayed and leaned to the wall for support. She had always made his favourite foods when he visited – chicken and leek pie, lasagne, chilli with rice – bustling round as he explained about the dams and his job. When Dad was still alive, Bernard's visits home were huge causes of celebration with talking into the night and much clapping on the back.

His last visit home was eight years ago, ten months after Dad died. It was nice, like always, but different to before. Bernard had to do the driving and mend things around the house. He had to call builders and visit DIY stores. Honestly, he'd been glad to leave.

The smell.

Anger forced him back outside. If she'd only waited another year before dying then his dam would have been complete and all this rushing about wouldn't be necessary! Suddenly worn out, Bernard's head spun with indecision. He hadn't expected everything to be plunged into this new world, he really hadn't. On the passenger seat were a few papers Mr Friedman had thrust his way with a handwritten mobile number encircled in red ink.

With shaking hands, Bernard rang the number. "Mr Friedman? Yes. Sorry to ring but I wonder if you could direct me to a hotel? I find I am not able to stay in my mother's house and the area has changed so much since I was last here."

***

"Please, don't think of it. It's no trouble at all." Mr Friedman fussed, taking Bernard's coat and overnight bag. "I should have come with you to the house." His fussing manner was quite gratifying, after all the humiliations and surprises of the day.

"If you're sure it's no trouble?"

"None at all," Mr Friedman assured. "I take it you had no joy at The Stag's Inn?"

"No," Bernard wailed. "The place was utterly changed and no Yorkshire puds." He sank into a chair.

"Well that is a shame. I'm no chef but let's see what I can do."

Bernard watched the news with a pot of tea and the occasional comment from Mr Friedman, who popped in and out of the adjacent kitchen. Smells of cooking began wafting through into the lounge. Even though Bernard was starving, he congratulated himself – and not for the first time – for buying his own apartment with a segregated kitchen. He surmised that, later on that evening, or next morning, the lingering essences of dinner would still be detectable. Not very pleasant.

"I'll show you your room."

Bernard followed Mr Friedman into a small but serviceable room with single bed and a chair by the window. Not so very different from his own spare back at home.

"There isn't much room I'm afraid but hopefully you'll be comfortable enough."

"Thank you so much." Bernard meant it. "I don't know what I would have done." He perched on the bed.

"I – I did wonder if the house would be too much for you," Mr Friedman rubbed his nose the same way as in his office, "but I try not to make assumptions. Everyone faces these things their own way."

"It was the Yorkshire puddings. It was such a shock."

Mr Friedman sat on the chair, green cloth, and leaned on one elbow. "Ann told me so much, I feel I already know you."

"Oh?" Bernard thought of Mum visiting the solicitor's offices on her own. A chilly breeze went up his leg. He hoped dinner would be ready soon and he could go to bed and sleep. Then tomorrow, after the funeral he could get a taxi to the airport and fly back home.

"She was very proud of you."

"Yes, I suppose she was." Ah, this sort of talk was safe enough. Bernard had been around Mum's friends many times over the years. He was good at answering their questions about dams, and the USA. They always wanted to know about the food. "You can ask me about my work, if you wish. Dad always loved that." He clasped his hands together in readiness and tried not to look directly at Mr Friedman, who was watching him carefully.

"Ah. I never knew your father. If you like, we can listen to the songs she chose over dinner."

Bernard's head ached with tiredness and being out of his depth. "Songs?"

"The funeral songs." Mr Friedman suddenly leaned forward. "Bernard?" Impossible to refuse such a direct question. Reluctantly, Bernard looked up. "I feel it's my duty – both to you and Ann – to make sure you're given the chance to contribute. I've been to too many funerals where people are unprepared and overwhelmed, and then afterwards they feel cheated. I'd hate that to happen to you. I'd never forgive myself." Bernard counted to twenty, then thirty. "It's just – if we don't decide tonight, there won't be time, you see."

Bernard had no idea what Mr Friedman was talking about. "Didn't my mother pay everything already?" he asked finally. "I'm happy to contribute."

"I'm not talking about money. Of course not!" Some kind of spasm went across Mr Friedman's face. It was the same expression Bernard had seen on a colleague once, after he sprained his ankle at work.

An excruciating silence descended where Bernard could think of nothing except giant Yorkshire puddings.

"I don't know what's happened to The Stag's Inn," he offered, desperately. "It used to be such a good pub."

Thankfully, the solicitor went back to the kitchen, muttering about the dinner, and Bernard was left to doze in peace.

***

"That was excellent." Bernard ate the Yorkshire pudding with gusto. "Did you ever go to The Stag's Inn?"

"No, I don't think so. Not much of a pub-goer." Mr Friedman poured more wine into Bernard's glass. "But do tell me."

"Well, it was a long time ago." Bernard began to get into his stride. The awkwardness of earlier, coupled with good food and wine, enabled him to relax and tell his stories of student years, where nothing mattered except getting the highest grade.

He looked around the room woozily, noticing for the first time that pictures of Mum were placed on the various ledges and walls, even on the table. Some of the photos were of Mr Friedman too, holding Mum's hand. But she looked happy. He tried to think back over the weekly telephone calls and then remembered that she had mentioned a man friend. "I didn't realise you knew her so well," he slurred, and giggled.

"Mm. Do you remember this song?"

"No, not really. And then one time, my good friend Michael turned up wearing a red wig! Laughed! We fell off the chairs." Bernard went into a fit of hysterics at the memory. "We were famous for our jokes."

"I'll bet. How about this one?"

"I expect that pub missed us terribly when the courses finished," Bernard hiccupped. "Why must all good things come to an end?"

"Mm." Mr Friedman smiled as he fiddled about, changing songs and showing Bernard photos of Mum. "This is a special photo. It's one she asked me to make sure you kept."

"So then we..." Bernard stopped as he looked at the picture, disappointed at having to stop his stories of olden days. It was a very old photo of a small boy and a woman standing by a river. "Is that...?"

"It's you, yes. Do you remember it?"

As Bernard looked, he began to hear the song playing in the background. He concentrated through the wine and fuzzy head, and gradually it made sense and turned into something he recognised and remembered. It was the Dam Busters theme song, 'The March', by Eric Coates.

***

He must have been very young, perhaps as young as two or three years old. He hadn't wanted to walk and was fixated on getting home as soon as possible. "Now, Mummy. Now!" he'd screamed, digging his heels into the mud so she had to carry him. "Want to go home."

"Just a little further." She'd picked him up and carried him to the water's edge. It had seemed like a lake, but of course was probably no bigger than the size of an average kitchen. "You can go in. It's not deep."

He jumped in, splashing and making a lot of noise. It was shallow water, low enough to wade from one side to the other easily enough with no risk. It was wet, cold, and the most fun Bernard had ever had in his young life.

He began picking up little stones, noticing how they altered the flow of the water. Soon he was piling the rocks and stones into mounds and gullies. He lost awareness of Mummy, and the park, and became immersed in the task of creating a little pool of his own. "It's for the ducks," he explained. "So they can bathe without going down river. And so they can drink and play."

"Is it a dam?" Mummy asked.

By the time he was finished, the dam had been secure enough to float reed boats that Mummy made without being whisked away.

***

"I'll be damned," Bernard said quietly. "Glen Howe Park. That was the day I built my first dam. She must have known I'd love doing that. I suppose all little kids love water." He studied the photo, remembering how Mum used to be blonde, and always smiling.

"But they don't all go on to become world-class dam engineers."

"Hah, I suppose not! She took me to reservoirs and lakes all over England. I had books and encyclopaedias, just so I could find out every bit of information I could about dams and water constructions. My – my mum." The tears came suddenly, or at least that's how it seemed. They came from the dusty pub, and the staring young students, from Owley and the sunflower pots. They exploded from the smell and the empty house, and from the dam deep inside Bernard.

***

"It's uncle Tim, isn't it? Of course I remember!" Bernard shook hands, kissed cheeks and made sure everyone got a drink and some food. It had been a rush, but with Mr Friedman's help the community hall was decorated with photos of Mum and Dad through the years. There was music and laughter as well as some sadness, as could be expected.

"Beautiful speech!" Uncle Tim exclaimed. "Ann would've been so proud."

"Yes, really lovely. Well done my dear." Aunty Agnes grabbed him again but he didn't mind so much. "We weren't sure you'd even be here. I suppose a flight from America takes days, and there's all that terrorism to think of."

Bernard welled up again but he wasn't the only one and so it was fine.

"What are you doing now, Bernard?" He was asked so many times that by the end his voice felt raw. He told them about the dam and the USA and they in turn told him about their families and lives. He lost count of children's names but there could be no denying that he enjoyed himself.

"Thank you," he said again to Mr Friedman, who kept to the back of the hall but ensured everything ran smoothly. The solicitor grasped his arm and squeezed gently.

"You're very welcome. And you'll stay a few days, like we discussed?"

"Yes, If you're sure you don't mind putting up with me. I think I'd like to look through the house after all. Say goodbye, you know?"

"It would be my pleasure." Mr Friedman poured Bernard a glass of sherry. "Ann – I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I believe she would have really liked us to be friends."

"And maybe you could visit me one day in the USA? I could show you my constructions?"

Mr Friedman squeezed Bernard's arm once more and smiled. "I'd love that. You won't believe this but I've never actually been out of England. We intended on going to Spain next year, but –" he pulled a face "– but that's life. It seems like you have endless years ahead of you and one day..." He stopped to dab his eyes. "Well. Shall we play the song again?"

"I think she would have liked that," Bernard said.

Home

Christopher Moore

I can see her.

Sitting there, plump and red-cheeked once more, the gaunt frame of those wretched final weeks now gone – the previously skeletal fingers are once again thick and full of colour, busy working the sewing machine and running a garment underneath it with all the finesse, all the expertise she learned through thirty years on the factory floor. Brow knitted and lips tight with concentration, completely engrossed in her work, in the item of clothing she's putting together that I know, from twenty years of being her son, will be beautiful to look at – something that will almost seem a crime to crease when wearing it. My eyes, if they are lying to me, are executing the deception extraordinarily well, a perfect rendition of the down-to-earth, rosy-cheeked grafter of a woman who was my mother. Back at her workstation, back at her job, getting on with it as though none of the last couple of years ever took place. As though the eight months of hospital appointments and chemotherapy sessions were a lie. As though all my grief, all my tears, all these months of feeling my soul break into smaller and smaller pieces, has been nothing but a bad dream, one already growing more distant with each second I watch her there, busy at her craft, not seeming to register anyone else in the room.

I keep completely still, utterly quiet, even though the logical part of me, the part not quite buried yet under emotion and longing, knows I'm being foolish. That this can't be real, that no mind could conjure two years' worth of life in the course of one night's sleep. The only thing this can be is a trick of the light. And yet, as I stay here gazing at her, at peace in her body, no longer wracked by pain, I daren't move a muscle. Daren't do anything to break the spell. Daren't look away, daren't even blink, for fear she'll disappear at any second.

And I don't want her to. I desperately, desperately don't want her to. Because the house feels warm again. Feels like a home, like a place where people can be happy – where I can be happy. Where I'm not forced to sit in empty rooms and yearn for someone who no longer exists. Where I can feel like someone's child again – someone loved and looked after and cared for. Someone safe, someone protected. Someone whose heart isn't burnt out forever like a used candle.

Maybe if I stand here long enough, things will stay this way. Maybe if I continue to not move, then this moment, this apparition, will remain like this forever. Maybe I'll get to stay happy.

So I stay there, lingering in the doorway, and watch her work.
Taigh nam Fithich (House of Ravens)

Kirsteen Bell

The wind is up and the ravens are outside my window, calling, "Come out, come out, come out to play." Their calls are loud and persistent over the susurration of wind in the yellowed birch leaves.

I am working from home, doing some last-minute fact-checking before I call someone for an article that I need to write. But again and again, the ravens call. My eye catches on the word 'binoculars' in earlier notes. I drop the phone, number half-dialled, and fly outside with the lenses.

I catch the ravens in my round glass net, dark silhouettes in the brightest of lights, following one or another as long as I can, before they drift behind the oak or birch, or beyond the rusted slate roof of our house. The noon sun is sharp, brightening the edge of a beak, or leaving a ripple of pewter along a wing beat. Light diffuses through the outstretched feathers on the underside of soaring wings. I hold one raven in the centre of a lens, until it is nudged out by another, like a child wanting in on the action. Then two more – I lower the binoculars – three, five, eight, ten, twenty... I stop counting and take a guess at thirty of these sleek black birds sliding through the cold blue sky above my head.

They birl and skiff in the autumn sun. I watch; it feels like when my children are trying to get my attention. Such narcissism. It must surely be some channelling of the wind that has drawn the ravens here, to this particular spot where I stand. I might be nothing more than an interesting sideshow, maybe not even that, maybe they're not paying the slightest bit of attention to me, far below them, feet in fallen leaves and my neck stretched back. This is their sky. Their home.

Ravens are protective of their space, though they seem to tolerate the gulls with whom they share the air here. Perhaps the sheer numbers of common, herring and black-back gulls make them a tide there would be little point in swimming against. Birds of prey, however, get short shrift.

An unusual cacophony from dozens of ravens one summer evening had lifted my attention out of a book towards the Velux window, just in time to see a golden eagle skim the tops of the trees. It dwarfed the normally imposing ravens that circled warily above it. If a buzzard appears on its mothwings, it is escorted from the premises with the courteous intimidation of a night-club bouncer.

A quick bark alerts me to roe deer shooting up the field beyond the stone wall, away from me. The ravens glide on, untroubled. As the wind lulls, the birch trees fall silent, revealing the steady rolling rumble of a digger at the landfill site just over the brow of the hill. Maybe not all narcissism then: the ravens are to some extent here because of me – because of every morsel that has gone into my bins, into the wheelie bin, down the brae, to be picked up by the bin lorries, taken round the corner and buried in the earth, along with all of Lochaber's rubbish.

Our house is on the ravens' daily flight path to this landfill. At dawn, I often stand outside, cradling my coffee, watching their purposeful flight high over the loch from Corrie Beag or Glen Suileag beyond, a steady stream to the south coming for their breakfast, elevenses, lunch and dinner. They collect their meals from the great mound of rubbish and back-filled earth shaped like Table Mountain. Some settle to eat their finds in the belt of woodland that runs along the back of our croft.

These birds are as much a part of my home as the land on which it rests. In the summer, their gentle croaking drifts in the open windows and my eyes peer into the leaves to catch a glimpse; in winter their shadows flicker across the pale dried grass and their dark shapes jink about in the bare spindling branches, a zoetrope of moving images seen from every window.

There is, however, always a time of year when I panic, when I realise that I can't remember the last time I saw them in the sky. I start to suspect the people who manage the dump of culling; every loud noise sounds to me like a gunshot. This happens every year without fail – and every year the ravens come back from their hiatus in their dozens, juveniles perhaps, not long fledged from their parental territory, gathering around the food source, making it their home until a more permanent territory can be found.

Every now and again I head up the hill with a black binbag and thick gloves to collect the rubbish that the ravens discard, middens of pecked-clean mammal bones and plastic food containers at the feet of the oak trees. I am ambivalent towards the task: I don't like the rubbish, but I like the birds, and I can't very well complain as long as I am one of the people producing it. So I carry on picking up their litter, much like I do for my children. Two ravens fly in a straight line back to the dump – I'm alerted to them only by the soft whupping of their wings in the air.

"Aye, it's your mess I'm cleaning up," I call up to them. Whether they hear me or not, there is no acknowledgement, and they are soon gone.

Dusk brings their communal departure. Standing in our garden, I have counted as many as 120 ravens arrowing across the violet-grey sky towards the north, towards nest sites I cannot reach. When I try to follow them with the binoculars, there comes a moment, a shift, when they tilt in the air and vanish from my sight. There could be a communal roost far up the glen, or many territories, borders clearly defined and well defended. From where I stand, their territory seems as wide as the sky.
The World Methusala Made

Ruth Bradshaw

Grey is everywhere in this landscape. The storm that sent trees and roof tiles tumbling across the UK two days ago is still clinging on here in the top left-hand corner of Wales. The grey sky above is filled with mist and rain, obscuring my view of the surrounding mountains. There are grey stones under my feet and towering piles of jagged grey slate all around me. Behind me the grey road stretches downhill past the terraced houses of Dolrhedyn, with the grey roofs of Tanygrisiau emerging through the mist in the distance and somewhere out of sight, the Vale of Ffestiniog. In front of me is a grey metal gate and beyond it the track leading up to Cwmorthin.

The only bright colour is a red and white bi-lingual notice on the gate. 'DANGER/PERYGL', it reads, above a warning that the track is undermined and prone to subsidence. The main gate across the track is locked, but I pass through a small gate to the side and walk on up with slate underfoot as well as looming above me in the huge tip on my right. To my left the river Dwryrd, swollen by the recent heavy rainfall, is an impressive sight as it tumbles down the mountainside before plummeting over a waterfall. It is easy to believe that this torrent could be undermining the ground beneath my feet, but I keep to the left-hand side at first so that I have a good view of the rushing water. Soon I find my way blocked by a series of metal beams with crowd control barriers welded to the top and I'm forced to use the far side of the track.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, when all this was covered by sea, deep water mud-stones formed on the sea bed. After the sea receded, these stones were transformed under intense heat and pressure into rocks that could be split into slates. Millennia later, the discovery of this slate would have far-reaching and long-lasting impacts. Like so much of Wales, this is a place whose human history is completely bound up with its geology. It is a history which is acknowledged around the world whenever geologists describe rock systems as Cambrian (the Latin name for Wales) or Ordovician (the Ordovices lived in the mountains of Snowdonia and were the last of the ancient tribes to submit to the Romans).

I spent many of my childhood holidays in one of the slate-built houses in Dolrhedyn. Most visits included at least one walk up this track, but there were no warning signs and barriers then. When my siblings and I were very young we rarely got further than Llyn Cwmorthin, and would spend many happy hours exploring the area around the lake. As our legs grew longer and stronger, we would often continue on to the summits of Moelwyn Mawr or its neighbour, Cnicht. These were the first mountains I ever saw, and I have climbed both of them more times than I can remember.

A short distance further on, my eye is drawn to a small plantation of conifers on the other side of the Dwryrd. Just visible in their midst is a strange ziggurat-like structure about two metres tall, made of pieces of slate. This is a garden created by a retired quarryman, Mr Jones, thirty or more years ago. I remember seeing him working on it sometimes when we visited. I would like to take a closer look now, but the footpath across the river is blocked off and I can soon see why. Beyond the barrier, a heaped-up mound of slates previously provided a footbridge of sorts, with a walkway across its flattened top and a gap left underneath for the Dywyrd. Now most of the upriver side of the 'bridge' has been swept away and only the brave or foolhardy would attempt to cross the narrow strip that remains.

Another enterprising Mr Jones is usually credited with starting slate mining in this area. One story is that Methusala Jones from Caernarfon dreamt of a location where the rocks split perfectly and came to the Vale of Ffestiniog in the 1760s to start a small quarry. It's a lovely tale, but Methusala was a publican and in another, more plausible version, his insight came not from a dream but from the chance remark of one of the drinkers in his pub. What is without doubt is that a slate rush soon followed, with numerous quarries opening in quick succession, attracting thousands of people to the area. In a story repeated time and again across the world, the ambitious and the desperate travelled in hope of a better life for themselves and their families.

Methusala had picked his moment well. Across the border in England, the Industrial Revolution was underway. Mills and factories were being built, along with housing for those who worked in them, and slate proved to be the ideal roofing material for all those new buildings. For centuries, people had used whatever building materials were common locally, but the arrival of slates and bricks, first by canal and then by railway, put an end to most traditional architecture. Reliably waterproof, easily repaired, more durable than thatch and lighter than stone tiles, Welsh slate was used for most of the new roofs of Britain throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. It gained a reputation as the best in the world and was soon widely used across Europe too.

Elsewhere in North Wales, the slate is close to the surface and had been quarried for many years before Methusala had his dream. But in the area around Ffestiniog, the slate vein is buried deep underground. During the second half of the nineteenth century, as demand increased and technology improved, more and more layers of slate were excavated, creating networks of tunnels and huge caverns, some of which are still accessible today. The mountains around me are effectively hollow shells, with their exteriors largely left intact, like the facades of grand buildings after the interior walls have been demolished. Vast quantities of material had to be dug out and discarded, in order to reach the rock that was of high enough quality to be split cleanly. It is the huge tips created from this waste slate which tower above me now. Even the track I'm walking on is made from discarded slate.

I'm distracted from my contemplation of the impacts of Methusala's discovery by the appearance of a bright splash of colour on one of the slabs of slate at a fork in the track. Daubed in orange paint are some fading words and a large arrow pointing to the left, a remnant of the annual mountain race, Ras y Moelwyn. There are no runners today and no other walkers either.

I follow the arrow and as the valley starts to open out in front of me, I can see the end of a terrace of houses on the other side of the Dwryrd. There is a sturdy footbridge made of slabs of slate here which I cross to reach the houses. They are ruins now, their roofs and windows long gone and the slate walls gradually collapsing back into the ground from which they were dug – but people lived in this remote and isolated place until as recently as the 1940s, and at one time around two-hundred families made their home here.

This terrace was one of a number built in the early nineteenth century, part of a building boom which saw housing built quickly and cheaply and as close as possible to the quarries in order to accommodate all the new people arriving in the area. Severe overcrowding in damp housing with poor sanitation meant typhoid was so prevalent that it became known as the 'Ffestiniog disease'. The quarrymen faced numerous risks at work too – even if they avoided injury from rock falls, there was no escaping the most deadly killer, slate dust. The death rate was so high at Cwmorthin that it earned the nickname 'Slaughterhouse Quarry'. But still people came, for the only alternative for many was poorly paid seasonal work in the fields. Many fortunes were made, often by those who already had plenty, and many lives were lost, usually by those who had little else to lose. It is often so, whenever the world's natural resources are exploited.

When international conflicts or economic downturns reduced the demand for building materials, there was too little employment for all these new arrivals. At such times, workers left – for the coalfields of South Wales or the battlefields of Flanders and France and further afield – but many returned when news reached them that the quarries were busy again. Some even went to America and came back with savings to invest in small businesses. Unlike many of the other slate mining areas, there were more opportunities for small investors in Ffestiniog, as there was no one big landowner. This also meant that there were frequent disputes between the different quarry owners over access to the various tracks built to transport the slate and the location of underground boundaries.

It was a dispute of a different kind that made headline news in the area in the 1880s, when a young solicitor from North Wales took on a case arguing for the rights of non-conformists to be buried in the churchyard of their local parish. After losing the original case, he took a challenge to the appeal court in London and won – a decision widely reported in the local press as a victory for common people over the establishment. This victory was partly paid for by the blood and sweat of quarrymen, as some of the financial backing for the appeal case came from those who had made their money in the Ffestiniog slate industry.

The solicitor who benefited from all this publicity, David Lloyd George, was a young man from a poor family who understood the hardships that working people faced. Within two years, he was elected to Parliament and would later go on to become Britain's first Welsh Prime Minister. But it was as Chancellor of the Exchequer that he did the most to repay the quarrymen, for it was then that he introduced social reforms such as state pensions and national insurance, which lay the foundations of the welfare state. Never again would families be entirely reliant on benefit concerts and charity if a quarryman was killed or injured.

Now I think of the people who lived on this mountain in those pre-welfare state days and particularly of the women who made homes in these damp dwellings. How did they feel as they waved their children off for the long walk down the mountainside to school each day or waited for the men to return from their dangerous work? Even if they had time to stop and admire the beauty of the surrounding landscape, did that provide much compensation for all the worrying and hardship?

The interior of most of the ruined houses are now a jumble of fallen stones, but one is clearer. I can see a slate flagged floor of the kind that would be considered stylish in a modern kitchen, but which must have offered little comfort to families struggling to keep warm in winter. The doorstep and the windowsills are all made of slate too. I stand in the doorway and look out at the view of the surrounding mountains, which is impressive even on a wet, grey day.

Families had farmed here for many centuries before anyone thought of digging slate out of these mountains and for a long time the area's most famous export was sheep. There are no sheep in sight today – they are wisely sheltering somewhere out of the rain – but the evidence of their presence is there in the close-cropped grass which covers all but the rockiest and boggiest parts of the land I can see.

Welsh sheep were prized for the sweetness of their meat and, in the days before the railways, drovers took them on the long journey over the mountains for sale in the markets in England, returning with tales from a foreign land and pockets full of gold. Exporting sheep still remains hugely important to the economy and culture of this part of Wales, but in recent times many of the lambs reared here have been destined for the dinner tables of other European countries where they may not be so welcome soon. What could the UK's withdrawal from the European Union mean for the view I'm looking at? Centuries of sheep-grazing have had as significant, if more subtle, impact on this landscape as the decades of slate-digging.

After exploring the houses, I continue on, at times having to walk ankle deep through water where the streams cascading off the surrounding hillsides have burst their banks and spilled out over the track. A fence separates me from the lake and this too, like many in the area, is made of slate – a long row of thick slabs, some shaped like elongated tombstones, stretches into the distance. A local woman once told me, "I love the slate fences. They're how I know I'm getting close when I'm driving home."

Up ahead I can just see the jagged silhouette of another roofless building. This one is a chapel – its glassless windows are the same long narrow shape found in dozens of similar buildings throughout Wales. When I reach the doorway, I pause to take in the scene that greets me. The floor is a jumble of stones with a few pieces of rotten wood sticking out. Most of the back wall has collapsed since I last visited and judging by the distance some of the stones have fallen – almost to the far end of the building – much of it came down in one tremendous crash. With the wind howling and the rain lashing around me, it is not hard to see how it could happen. Reeds and grass grow in the few areas not covered by the fallen rocks and the grey wall beside me is speckled with patches of green, where mosses and ferns have taken advantage of the relative shelter inside. Nature is gradually reclaiming the materials from which the building was made.

I stand for a few moments in a corner of the chapel with my eyes closed and try to imagine this place as it would have been every Sunday for so many decades. The rows of wooden pews filled with worshippers, the smell of well-worn woollen clothing that never quite gets a chance to dry properly, the voices raised in harmony, singing in a language I do not understand and interspersed with the coughing and wheezing of lungs damaged by slate dust and the cold, damp living conditions.

When this chapel opened in 1866 there was already one a short distance away along the lakeside, but it was common in the nineteenth century for Welsh villages to have at least two chapels – "One to go to, and the other to never set foot in," as the saying goes. Religion was hugely important to the people who lived here, along with the music and the singing that were an integral part of the services they attended. This life inspired other forms of culture too – the men held poetry competitions and discussed philosophy in their short meal breaks underground. History does not record whether the women had time for similar activities.

When I leave the relative shelter of the chapel, the rain is coming down so heavily it feels as though I am walking through a wall of water. This is not a day for climbing mountains alone and so, with a mixture of regret and relief, I abandon my walk and retrace my steps back to Dolrhedyn. As I walk away from the mountains I think about the people who lived here in times past and wonder what they would have made of the many brightly clad runners, walkers and climbers who now pass through here each year on their way to the summits of Moelwyn Mawr, Cnicht and the other mountains nearby. Would they be puzzled by all the people who choose to spend their leisure time walking or running the same tracks along which the quarrymen trudged to and from work each day? Or think it strange that people pay to visit slate mines? And stranger still that some pay even more to bounce their way round abandoned caverns on a trail of trampolines or hurl themselves down steep hillsides on specially constructed mountain bike trails? Outdoor recreation and adventure tourism have replaced slate mining as the area's main industry and these mountains, where once so many lived and too many died, have now become a playground.

I am still thinking about all this two days later when I make the long train journey home. It is raining again as I leave Wales, but the weather slowly improves. By the time I'm walking the last half mile back from my local station in south London, the clouds have cleared and the slate roofs of the surrounding Victorian houses gleam in the late afternoon sunshine. I am still in the world Methusala made.

Bibliography

Bailey, Anthony. A Walk through Wales. London: Harper Collins, 1992.

Blaenau Local History Society. 'Blaenau's Story.' Video published on YouTube 19 April 2012. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnF9XnFFAQQ> (last accessed 13 February 2020).

Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. The Future of Land Management in Wales. (Cardiff: National Assembly for Wales, 2017). <https://www.assembly.wales/laid%20documents/cr-ld10995/cr-ld10995-e.pdf > (last accessed 13 February 2020).

Cofio Cwmorthin Remembered. 'Recording an abandoned settlement.' <http://www.cwmorthin.com> (last accessed 13 February 2020).

Evans, E.D. A History of Wales 1660-1815. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993.

Fortey, Richard. The Hidden Landscape: A journey into the geological past. London: Jonathan Cape, 1993.

Hoskins, W.G. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Penguin Books, 1985.

Richards, Alun John. Two Snowdonia Rivers: Glaslyn and Dywyrd. Pwllheli: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2008.

Senior, Michael. The Vale of Ffestiniog and its Hinterland. Pwllheli: Llygad Gwalch Cyf, 2014.

Thomas, Gwyn. Blaenau Ffestiniog. Llandysul: Gomer Press, 2007.

Wood, Ray. 'Hydropower in Snowdonia: a green blessing or a moneymaking blight?' BMC website, 20 October 2016. <https://www.thebmc.co.uk/hydropower-in-snowdonia-a-green-blessing-or-a-moneymaking-curse> (last accessed 13 February 2020).
Winter Threads

Susan Taylor

The tree makes a sound

I hear as glitter, glitter;

rain seeds into hail.

In December, I search

for lambswool; unfold

fabric in tatters.

A whole flutter of moths

rises from my ruined skirt.

Soft wool spins like snow

through the air.

Thin-winged creatures

plot the same havoc

as their forebears.

The tree makes that sound

again: glitter, glitter;

hail softens to rain.
What Color Am I?

Marjorie Waterman

I was born believing I was a Christian Scientist. That lasted until I was eight years old, when I learned that, prior to my birth, my father had had a crisis in faith. A good friend of his was a Christian Scientist and suggested that Daddy join the church to gain an understanding of the meaning of faith. When I was old enough to start kindergarten, I began studying the religion of Mary Baker Eddy and believed in it wholeheartedly. I went to Christian Bible School each summer and sang, "Jesus loves me, this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so." As I got a little older, I highlighted paragraphs every Sunday after church in Science and Health: A Key to Scripture on the lesson for the following week. I even healed my sister and myself from Scarlet Tina (a mild form of Scarlet Fever) with an all-night session of prayer. I was quite proud of myself, and when our fevers broke the next morning, I was sure Jesus had cured us.

Shortly after, however, I learned that both my parents were Jewish by birth and that we would be rejoining the Tribe. I was irate. Was Jesus still going to love me?

"We can't be Jewish," I yelled at my father. "The Jews killed Christ!"

Gradually, my father calmed me. He arranged for our rabbi to make weekly visits to help me convert to my new status, both intellectually and emotionally. I asked a million questions, challenging everything the rabbi said. Dr. Joseph Rauch was a kind, patient, and brilliant man, and so well respected in the community that the Rauch Planetarium in Louisville is named after him. He reminded me that Jesus was, in fact, a rabbi, and that the entire Old Testament was the history of Judaism. He explained that, while Jesus was respected by Jews as a wise teacher, they did not believe he was the literal son of God.

"Reform Judaism teaches that all children are sons and daughters of God," he explained. This made sense to me, and I slowly began to embrace my new religion, trading my small gold cross for a tiny gold Star of David.

Being Jewish, however, was not an easy transition, especially living in Louisville, Kentucky, in the fifties. One morning, I woke to find a large, red Swastika emblazoned on our garage door. I was horrified. My father had the door repainted immediately, but I was left with a chill of fear, wondering who hated us so. At that time, I attended a school where the majority of students were either white, Blue Bloods – the very wealthy Daughters of the American Revolution whose ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower – or farmers dressed in denim overalls and straw hats. There were also social clubs I wasn't invited to join.

Simply put, I didn't fit in.

There were two other Jewish students in my school, though I was only friends with one of them, a girl named Melinda. The other, Steve, was a football star who was somewhat accepted, so long as he didn't try to date anyone's daughter. It was no surprise that the separation I felt from my peers left me feeling isolated and played a major role in my identity. I no longer considered myself to be white; I felt like an outcast. Louisville was still segregated at that time, and there were neighborhoods and country clubs where Jews were not welcome. And so began the cycle of a question with no answer: What color am I?

In the sixties, the Civil Rights marches took place. I marched with friends and family. The only black friends I had then were Dr. Fred Hobby, a Sociology professor I had met while taking classes at the University of Louisville, and Ruby Moxley, a woman who had trained as a laboratory technician with me in 1958. Ruby's husband Irving, a Presbyterian minister, also marched with us, as did my sisters, Peggy and Bonnie. Louisville integrated its schools in the seventies and later its neighborhoods... mostly. There were still pockets of segregated housing, schools, and country clubs; Jews and gentiles rarely mixed in social gatherings. Ruby used to tease me about how when she and Irv came to visit, they would come in through the back door like servants so my neighbors wouldn't get upset.

My son's first grade teacher was black, and for this I was grateful. I wanted him to understand that not all black women were maids. Bringing him home from school one day, he saw a black woman standing on the corner and said, "Look, Mommy, there's a maid waiting for her bus." I asked him how he knew she was a maid since she wasn't wearing a uniform. He looked at me with confusion as I explained that not all black women were maids, that they had other professions, too. His having a black teacher reinforced my remark, and when his teacher married, she invited her whole class of (mostly white) students to her wedding, a further object lesson.

My youngest sister, Bonnie, began living with Fred near the University of Louisville soon after I'd introduced them. Fred helped my children understand that, while racism was not acceptable, there was still an undercurrent in our community. Fred had a daughter from his previous marriage named Michael, an unusual name for a little girl. She was four years old, the same age as my youngest daughter, Meg. Michael, her father, and my sister Bonnie came to dinner often, and one evening, my daughter sat staring at Michael through the entire meal. I became anxious, wondering what she might say. After dinner, Meg climbed on my lap and whispered in my ear, "Mommy, can you fix my hair like Michael's?" I felt giddy with relief and laughed heartily, realizing how my own preconceptions had blinded me. Michael's hair was styled in three pom-poms, and as I ran my hand over Meg's curls, I said, "Sure we can, sweetheart. We can do that."

Years later, when I was working at the Whitney Young Job Corps Center in the late seventies, one of the students asked me, "What color are you?" At that time, I had a kinky, curly afro and a tan, and he likely thought I was of mixed race. I laughed and told him I was high yellow; being that he was black and from New York, he well understood the meaning of the term. But even so, the question surprised me, and I began to realize I was not the only one who was unsure of my identity.

I've lived from segregation to the induction of a black president. I worked on Barack Obama's campaign and even had the opportunity to shake his hand. I stayed up all evening on the night of the 2009 election, vibrating with anticipation as the final results were tallied. By that time, I was teaching GED classes in a Miami-Dade County jail, and I'd told my students this could happen. They didn't believe me. "This is America," I said. I sobbed as the final results were announced. This is it! I thought. Finally, we have arrived. 'We Have Overcome'.

Not so fast. Anticipation turned to dread when, eight years later, new election results were tallied. Donald J. Trump – a reality TV show host, a Twitter-thumbed toddler, a racist ogre – had become the next president, and with him came a global eruption of hatred, loathing, hostility, and malice in various forms. Including a surge in antisemitism.

When filling out documents asking for race, I've previously selected 'white', but that no longer seems to fit. Now all I can think about is the Holocaust, Crystal Night, the pogroms in Europe. People fleeing from their countries. Six million dead. The slogan 'Never Again!' Migrants collecting at our boarders, unwelcome, unwanted, mistreated, abused. Police shooting innocent people in our streets. Innocents in prisons, children in cages. The rule of law in crisis. What has happened to us? Who are we?

Like an evil monster awakening from a long slumber, tyranny is raising its ugly head once again. Who am I? Where do I belong? What color am I?

Where is my home?
End and Beginning

Alexis Keir

As soon as they moved in, they heard him. The sounds of his existence filtered through the solid Victorian walls: the distant tap-tap-tap of a hammer, the rhythmic whisper of sandpapering, sometimes the faint whirrr of a drill. But never too late to be a nuisance. No reason given to thump the plaster late at night in retaliation, or for Dave to pace up and down muttering about 'that inconsiderate bastard!' next door, like he had so many times in their last flat. And although they had their own moving-in projects to work on, they never popped round to hesitantly ask to borrow a wallpaper stripper or a sander. There were too many other young couples in the neighbourhood who looked and sounded just like them for Jess and Dave to have to worry about exchanging cups of tea with their nearly invisible neighbour. While their shiny black metal gate regularly swung back and forth, their neighbour's light blue gate with the broken slats seldom creaked open, except for rare visits by the postman. And the weeds on his dark and overhung garden path were untroubled, cracks and moss dividing the remaining brown tiles into an unfinished jigsaw. They thought they might spot him in his garden more as the days warmed and grew longer, but all they occasionally saw was the bob of a woolly hat bending to collect and bag up leaves and twigs ready for recycling. Sometimes, as she peeped out from upstairs, she would see him bend upwards slowly and glance around his garden, looking for something or someone no longer there. Not a triumphant gaze but one that seemed to measure emptiness. And though she always had time to slip back into the shadow of their bedroom, his eyes never tried to lift above what was straight in front of him – the fences, plants and walls were all he seemed to want to see.

He wasn't really a hermit. He was seen: in the shops, on the street, at the library. Her new friend, Anna, said that she had eased past him with her toddler and trolley in the aisle of the supermarket. Anna had peered over his shoulder into his basket and wondered why exactly one man would need so many cleaning products. Dave, backing out the car in the morning, would see him shuffling up the road towards the town centre, always with bags and a thick coat, whatever the weather. She herself had once joined the early morning queue of pensioners at the post office and seen him first in line in front of the closed doors, a parcel wrapped in brown paper grasped by both hands. Inside, she stood close enough to hear his hoarse but deep whisper: "Next day delivery please – Cambridge." Saw the dark, gaunt, unsmiling face under the old man's cap and smelt the sharp tang of antiseptic around him.

Jess and Dave talked about him occasionally, when they ran out of conversation about property prices and loft conversions and future schools. How old was he? How long had he lived there? What did he get up to next door? Where was his family? Especially where was his family? There had definitely been one... from their windows, they could see so many clues. The tree platform necklaced by its tyre swing, the three or four rugby and basket balls nestled in the grass and bushes, a bike propped against the fence, its windblown tarpaulin dragging and chain long rusted. Whoosh-whoosh. Tap-tap. Whirrrrrr. Every day. Even through Christmas. But nothing major, apparently. No ancient baths appeared on the front lawn, nor skips convenient for neighbours to empty their attics into late at night. No noisy workmen with loud transistors putting up scaffolding or manoeuvring girders.

Spring became summer, and his story gradually became clearer during the BBQ chats and pub gossip. He'd been there for years – he wasn't an ambitious builder looking to get rich quick on the back of the area's gentrification. Just a lonely handyman – a perpetual doer-upper. His family never came back, Mrs Patel at the newsagents finally told them. "They went on holiday – wife and kids – and he stayed behind to save some money and get a few jobs done. To feed the pets. But they never came back. Don't know what happened to the pets. There were frogs and lizards and cockatiels. But just himself to look after now. And that big house."

Jess listened to this mix of myth and nosiness with polite disinterest for months, but now she was standing at his door regardless. She couldn't see a knocker, so she rapped the wood hard with her knuckles and with a confidence she didn't feel inside. As she had slipped through the ageing gate, it had raspingly announced her arrival in a thoroughly unwanted way, and she was convinced that he was already glaring at her through the yellowed net curtains. "Don't bother," everyone had told her, "he'll only blank you and not open the door." Dave had grunted goodbye to her with his head buried deep inside the cistern of their toilet, the handle for which had suddenly become loose and ineffective. "Don't spend too long with the weirdo!" his voice had echoed out. But she had more time on her hands, working from home now, and a little community project to organise, so she felt determined – no door on the street was going to be left unknocked in her search for volunteers. Now she could make out the imprint and screw holes of a knocker removed long ago. She tried to make a noise again using the letterbox flap, but with just one fairly disappointing snap, it lurched to the side, askew and disjointed. The door opened immediately. She braced herself to be told off and shouted at. After all, that's what Dave did when she didn't hold the wet wallpaper still enough or bumped an open paint can with her feet. But her neighbour just stood there – taller than most of the men she knew – in a grey cardigan and blue tracksuit bottoms with an improbable RAWKOS logo on the thigh. She realised that he wasn't old but older, a face full of worry, bald head left uncovered now. Later, she would remember that he had held a hammer in his left hand, and that perhaps it should have caused her more worry than it actually did. But for now, her gaze and horror were focused on the broken letterbox.

"I'm so sorry," she gasped. "I just moved it..."

"It's OK," he said. "I was fixing it. Hasn't worked. Can I help you?"

Flustered, she tried to compose herself by delving into her bag for a leaflet, but now she noticed more of the gloom behind him. Except that it wasn't gloom. That's what Jo and Anna and Kate and their husbands wanted her to say weeks later at a dinner party. That it was gloomy and dusty and that, in fact, the door had swung itself open and she had stepped into a ghostly and barren space before he had revealed himself as a disembodied voice whispering from behind her. But it wasn't like that at all. Sunlight from the kitchen down at the end of the hallway lit up the black and white pictures on the wall and, disconcertingly, her nose twitched as it drew in the acrid smells of fillers and bleach.

"It's about the festival... about the old market... we're going to have a community festival. You know, just to celebrate the street. We've got a meeting in the arts centre next Wednesday. We just need volunteers, committee members." And then, more quietly and belatedly, "I'm Jess. I live next door..." Her voice trailed off, waiting for a reaction, a response.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm very busy. But thank you. For asking."

Bizarrely, she thought she saw tears in his eyes. Fuck, she thought, time to go. He is weird.

"I've got some old notices though," he said. "Some pictures from the original market."

No, she said to herself, I am not going inside, never mind the kitchen sunlight. Somehow, her mind's thoughts powered their way to her muscles, and, to her shame, she took a half step backwards. But he seemed not to notice. Stood there quiet and dignified. Unshaven, yes, and slightly sweaty, but not scarily crazy. Just sad crazy. She noticed the paint now on his clothes – white. But only flecks. He wasn't drenched in it, like she and Dave seemed to be after each room was completed.

"I'll push them in your letterbox," he said. "I promise not to break it."

She laughed. Much too loudly, but it helped them both. She hesitated a little, wondering if Dave would tell her off for linking them with the local oddball, but this was her project, her neighbourhood. "Please come round," she said. "Come round for coffee if you like. If you're not too busy? I'm in most mornings." All of a sudden, she became aware of movement out of the corner of her right eye. It was coming from her own house, above the perfectly level line of their immaculately trimmed hedge. Dave liked precision and angles. And it was Dave who was gesturing to her now from the window of their front bedroom, finger jabbing furiously in the direction of his watch. She ignored him and carried on talking. Her neighbour standing on his doorstep hadn't noticed.

"I'll see," he said. "I'm a little busy, but I'll try. Got a big job on for my family. They'll be back soon."

And yes, she'd say later when her friends interrogated her over sherry and desserts, he really did say family and he did say soon. For some reason, she always seemed to leave out the tears, although it was clear now that they filled the corners of his eyes.

"Are they on holiday?" she asked, though she and Dave had moved in six months ago and had hardly seen a sign of anyone going in or out of that little blue gate.

"Yes. They like skiing. I'm not very good, though. It was never right for me." And now his eyes pleaded with her to stop.

"Me neither," she said. "I like the scenery, though, and the drinking. But much prefer a beach, really."

He looked beyond her, and a distant memory seemed to catch him and take him elsewhere.

Again, a flurry of motion in her peripheral vision. Dave was back in the window, his hands seesawing two lengths of plastic which seemed to have had a former union with each other. She lowered her eyes and tried to concentrate on what her neighbour was saying, but upstairs something crashed to the floor and metal clattered across marble. They both jumped.

"Oh, sorry. I left my toolbox balanced on the toilet. Got distracted by the letterbox."

"Toilets..." Jess replied. "Don't talk to me about toilets – ours has stopped flushing. My husband's trying to fix it now."

"I'm good with plumbing," he said. "I'm doing up our bathroom. For when they get back. Everything new, everything clean."

His eyes wandered past and beyond her head. Seeing a taxi arrive: luggage being pulled out of a car boot and piled up on the kerb. Adult arms hugging small children. Hearing chatter and bright voices and hellos and kisses. A vision replayed in his head again and again, but each time fading out to the quiet of a dull suburban close: an empty pavement, strangers passing, and now Dave's car reversing out into an impatient three-point turn and screeching off in the direction of B&Q. Which was going to close early today, Jess suddenly remembered. Tension flooded her body as she thought of the mood he would be in when he got back.

"That's the float rod that's broken."

Jess jerked back from the bad memories she had been lost in. "What is?"

"The piece that's broken," he said. "That your husband was holding. It won't be too hard to replace."

She blushed but not that deeply. He had seen Dave's little puppet show. "Ah... my husband and I... neither of us are very practical. I think he's trying to get to B&Q now before it closes." She tried to get the conversation back to a subject she felt more comfortable with. "Coffee then? Tomorrow? With the pictures?"

He hesitated. "I'm quite busy tomorrow. I'm a bit behind, got to catch up. I don't know when..."

"Ok... I understand. Goodbye." Jess turned away, suddenly feeling desperate to bring this tense encounter to an end. She walked towards the gate and then she saw it from the other side, just the way he saw it every day. Fading now, but painted to remind the residents of the house that they belonged together. The childlike scene on the inside of the gate: the happy family holding hands under a smiley-face sun. A light blue sky over a dark blue sea which lapped their toes as they stood on bright yellow sand. She turned and faced his house again. Though there had been plenty of time for him to retreat inside, the door remained ajar. Had he been watching her?

"Hello?" Her voice was quiet, but he reappeared immediately. "Perhaps you could help with our loo if you came tomorrow... do you have a spare one of those rod thingies? If my husband doesn't get there before the shop closes?"

"Oh! Well maybe... I mean, I think I do. But he might make it... they shut at 5 on Sundays. Are you sure?"

"Yes. Please. Please come. Just in case."

He looked at her for a long while and then nodded and said yes. And then she did an about turn with a bright and breezy "Byeee." But this time simply to save them both from awkwardness.

"Excuse me..."

"Yes?" She looked back again at the lonely man framed in the aurora of light which had burst along the corridor from the distant back garden. He was crowned by an untidy laurel of wisteria across the doorway. A king without a kingdom, she thought.

He seemed embarrassed to ask her: "The bleach. The smell. Is it too much? Would it put you off? Is it too much?"

"No," said Jess. "It's nice. It would be nice to come home to." And she turned out of the painted gate, closing it carefully behind her, the latch slotting home perfectly despite the age of the wood holding it.

They still heard him. The faint tap-tap-tap of hammer strokes, muffled whispers of sandpapering, sometimes the buried whirrr of a drill. He was still busy. Mending the taps and sealing the bath, filling in holes, tightening up handles, washing the walls. His gift and crowning act of love for his family. To say sorry for the long, long days working elsewhere and grumpy tired evenings. Pouring his loneliness and missing of them into night after night of fixing and mending. Not that they were really coming back. They were ghosts now. But his work went on.

Autumn came, and still she saw him in the garden trundling up and down, collecting sticks and twigs. But now he looked up sometimes. And instead of spinning away behind the curtain, she stayed and stood, framed in the dark of the room behind her. Every single time now he would smile. And so would she.
Simple

Jude Gray

simple [sim-puhl] 1. Easy to understand, deal with, use; 2. Not elaborate or artificial, plan; 3. Not ornate or luxurious, unadorned.

***

The girl next door has a lot of visitors. A procession of them, even. I like the word 'procession' because it sounds like the meaning; it sounds like a march of people. Not that a 'procession of visitors' actually means a group of people marching to visit someone. Sometimes words put together to make a phrase don't actually mean what they mean on their own. I learned that when I was at school and my gran said that the headmaster would have a procession of parents to his office to complain about the new janitor who was always slapping the kids over the head with his rolled-up newspaper. I watched his office for the whole of break and then again at lunchtime and I only saw Danny Peden's mum go in and she wasn't complaining about the janitor, she would be getting told that Danny had been caught smoking... again. When I told Gran that there had been no procession to the headmaster's office, she had rolled her eyes then carefully explained that 'a procession of visitors' was just a phrase and didn't really mean procession. Anyway, Sara, the girl next door, has a lot of visitors, so I think she must have a lot of friends and they're all men.

There was one on Monday afternoon with floppy hair, then another in the evening who didn't leave until the morning. Then a different one yesterday afternoon and Floppy Hair back in the evening with another man. Anyway, I thought he looked like a nice young man because he wore well-pressed trousers and neat polo shirts in pastel colours, but then I heard him call Sara by a bad name, which I won't repeat, and now I don't think he is nice at all. Gran always said, "You can't judge a book by its cover." Anyway, Floppy Hair's black heart was plain for me to see when he was leaving Sara's house late Tuesday night. I was letting Kitty in and she was rubbing against my ankles. I was bending down to rub her ears when Floppy Hair came out of next door with his friend.

"Told you she was easy." Floppy Hair slung an arm around the other man's shoulder.

The other man had a short-trimmed beard and a long mustard scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. It looked soft, like the fur on Kitty's belly. The scarf, I mean, not the beard. Then Floppy Hair called Sara the bad name and Beard-scarf laughed as he pulled the door shut, making the letterbox rattle. I gave Kitty's ear one last rub before straightening up and tugging the ends of my cardigan tight across my chest. Beard Scarf nudged Floppy Hair and nodded towards me.

"Oh, don't mind her. Sara says she's simple." He twisted his finger against his temple. A gesture I know well. Then he said two more bad words, this time about me. Both men laughed and bounced down the steps to the street without looking back.

My gran always said that "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names can never hurt you," but no matter how often she said it, the bad names still hurt me. A lot. Although I don't mind being called 'simple'. That was one of the first words I collected. Ever since I got the Collins Junior Dictionary for my eleventh birthday, I've collected different words. When I hear or see a word that I don't understand, then I look it up in the dictionary, and if I like the word, I'll keep it in my head. I like 'simple'; it means 'easy to understand' and I think that's a nice thing. Certainly better than being complicated; that would just be confusing. So I don't mind that Sara called me simple.

She's a student at the university. It's the first time we've had students for neighbours, even though everyone calls St Andrews a university town. I say 'we', but actually it's just me now that my gran has gone. Gran told me that it was nicer to say that someone has 'gone' rather than 'died'. I don't know why. Either way the person isn't there anymore, and I miss my gran so much that it makes my stomach turn to jelly when I think about it. Gran's sister lived with us, too, and she went just a few weeks after Gran. My stomach feels fine when I think about her.

Students really are everywhere in town. You can't move in Tesco without tripping over a student, especially in the wine and beer aisle, and the pubs and cafes in town are full of them, too. Not that they pay much attention to me. I'm invisible to them. In fact, I'm invisible to most people. I read a magazine called Cosmopolitan in the dentist's waiting room once, and it said women over the age of forty become invisible to the rest of the population. So, if that was true, then I've been invisible for six years. Although, I think I've been invisible for a lot longer than that. Maybe it's because I always wear beige clothes and I just blend in with most backgrounds, like the animal on the nature programmes, the one that changes colour to stay hidden. Only I don't change colour, I just stay beige. But Sara always notices me. She always stops to chat if she sees me at the front door. She asks me how my day is going then she listens to my answer as if she's really interested, and not many people do that. Most people ignore me. Gran used to say to me, "Polly, your golden heart will always shine through all your armour." But she didn't mean real armour. It's a bit like the procession, just a phrase. Besides, I don't wear armour, just beige cardigans with two pockets.

Sara is definitely a nice girl, but I don't know why she's friends with such horrible people, so I asked her when I saw her this morning. She was wearing her pink running jacket. The colour suits her with its brightness.

"You're such a nice girl. Why are you friends with horrible people like Floppy Hair?"

"Floppy Hair?" She stopped stroking Kitty and frowned. I like that Sara doesn't ever look shocked by the way I asked questions, the way that other people sometimes do.

"You know, the one with the pastel polo shirts and the black heart?"

She threw her head back, making her shiny, auburn hair ripple down her back, and laughed a deep, warm laugh.

"A black heart – that's a great description. I love it."

I arched my back, stretching the aches out of it, and waited for her laughter to stop. "So, why are you friends with him?" I asked.

She bent down to scratch Kitty's ears then stood up again. "Can I be honest, Polly?" She rubbed her forehead. "I want to be part of that crowd. They're all really close, like a family, and I want to be part of it." Her voice was quiet, and I had to lean forward to catch her words.

I remembered that Sara had told me that she had no contact with her family. "A bunch of crooks and chancers," she'd said. I'd had to look 'chancer' up in the dictionary; it means someone who pretends to have skills that they don't have so that they can get something they want. I won't be collecting that word.

"Are all your visitor-men part of that crowd?" I asked.

She laughed again, but this time it was an empty sound and her shiny hair didn't move. "Yes, they're all part of that crowd," she said. "They're always together in a big gang. They're never alone. Never lonely."

I nodded. I had lived with my gran my whole life. Since she died, I'm always alone. But I'm not lonely. I have Kitty for company.

"I must seem desperate to you," she said.

I thought for a moment. She looked sad and I wanted to find the right words. "Desperation clouds the judgement." A Gran favourite. I never did understand it. I mean, I know what each word means on its own, but it doesn't make sense together. Another phrase. But it must've meant something to Sara because her eyes got all teary. "Not all families are nice. Maybe these people are chancers like your real family."

She blinked her eyes and smiled at me, then reached over and squeezed my arm. "Polly, you are a wise woman and I thank you for your advice."

"Wise but simple, that's me." I grinned at her, and she threw her shiny head back and laughed her deep, warm laugh again.
Somebody Else's Mirror

Jan McCarthy

I'm fortunate. My home isn't one most would envy: a small flat on a busy road a few metres away from a four-way junction, but it's a happy home, shared with my husband Terry. We love to sit in our little balcony garden and watch the sun rise and set, the budding of fresh green leaves in spring, their transformation to the rich colours of autumn, the snowfall that brings a blessed silence to the streets.

Children and grandchildren, and a small circle of close friends, visit us from time to time. Our eight-storey block and its twin sit side by side, sandwiched between a pub and a primary school. It's a supported housing scheme for people over fifty-five, looked after by the city council. I came here when my life fell apart. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fifty, I was beyond grateful not to find myself homeless.

Bipolar is still considered by many to be a mood disorder but recent studies have shown it's a misfire of the brain's judging and decision-making processes. However, I've found that if you try to work within your brain's fluctuating capabilities, retreat from triggering situations and people, spend time in nature and draw on your creativity, you can live a useful life, at least part of the time.

My husband Terry and I met here: a pair of determined singletons for whom finding true love came as a surprise. When I moved in, Terry was already living here. I used to watch him from my kitchen window, often carrying a bag of shopping or medicines he'd fetched for a neighbour, or going in and out of the building at the back that houses the communal lounge and laundry, and a room for housing officers. I loved to hear Terry laugh at the caretaker's latest jokes, or watch him bend his head to listen as people confided their troubles.

He ran weekly bingo sessions. I would never have joined in if it hadn't been for Terry. Bingo wasn't my thing at all. But, when I found the courage to attend, I met some incredible people who, like me, had found themselves in need of social housing – of a sanctuary. There were those who had been struck down by ill-health and lost businesses or careers. Some had worked in industries that had gone to the wall. I don't know anyone here who fits the negative stereotype of council tenants one too often encounters.

Terry and I fell in love, organising and running social events together. I had my computer and printer. Terry needed posters. Not long after, we applied to the city council and got their support to start up a residents' association. Other tenants joined in, attracted by the buzz of excitement we generated. We became a happy band of volunteers, full of ideas. Fund-raising became my task. Soon we were running an IT club, tai chi sessions, trips to beauty-spots, art workshops and cookery classes.

It was fulfilling and fun. But there was sadness too, and most of all when an elderly neighbour, someone with whom Terry shared a sense of humour and a favourite football team, told us he had prostate cancer, and that it was terminal. He was our chairperson and – I discovered – the originator of the caretaker's funniest jokes. When Trevor became too ill to walk more than a few steps, he used to sit on a wooden bench that faced the car park across a barren patch of ground. We would often go and sit with him, making the most of his company.

"It's not fair," Terry said to me one day over dinner, "Trevor's not got a single tree or flower to look at. We should make him a flower-bed."

And so we did. Trevor watched as we dug out turf and planted rose bushes, Michaelmas daisies and primulas – and kept us supplied with jokes. The caretaker brought us cups of tea and chocolate biscuits to keep us going. And once Trevor had his flower-bed, we began to tackle the rest. How I wish Trevor could see how the garden looks now, five years on. How proud he would be of the awards we've won – we and the handful of neighbours, friends and family members who've come alongside. I think the one we're proudest of came from David Domoney: Inspiration Street, part of his Cultivation Street initiative that celebrates amateur community gardens. Last autumn Terry won the citywide gold In Bloom award in the Cleaner, Greener Neighbourhoods category. I was so proud of him – of all of us.

What used to be a desert of concrete and asphalt now blooms for three seasons of the year. Red and orange berries hang in the shrubs like fairy lights in winter, when everything around is relentless monochrome. When we're outside, planting or pruning, passers-by call out friendly greetings and praise our efforts. We're certainly a mixed bag, we tenants, but we're grateful to be here, and to admire the roses and honeysuckle that spill over the fences, the spring bulbs that remind us every year that life goes on. I am always cheered by the sight of Jean, who is in her nineties, bending to smell a daffodil.

Whenever my husband and I come home, I feel a surge of joy mixed with relief. I have galloping osteoarthritis and often, when we're out, a vision of my reclining chair or of our bath, steaming and frothing with bubbles, comes to me. But just this week a chance remark, made by a friend, brought me to a deeper appreciation of what the word 'home' truly means.

It was a rainy afternoon on the allotment – Terry's latest project. The ground had turned to a black mud that seeped through our gardening gloves. A chill easterly was blowing. My friend Heather and I were doggedly weeding a patch, one of ten divided by narrow paths. It was destined for dwarf beans, but had become overrun with what, in another place, might be termed wildflowers. Poppies had swarmed in, encouraged by periods of rain interspersed with hot sunshine. Not just poppies but speedwell, lambsquarters, borage and the odd thistle.

Heather also belongs to my writing group, which also came into being here on the estate.

"What does the word home conjure up when you hear it?" I thought to ask her.

I'd been thinking about how to approach the topic for this very piece and was feeling a little overwhelmed. How was I going to avoid writing about all the years when I didn't feel at home anywhere? When there was a sadness in me that never went away?

Heather carried on for a couple more minutes, head down, working her trowel under a particularly stubborn clump of couch-grass. I knew better than to interrupt. Her answer would come eventually, and it would be worth the wait, even though my back was aching and I was getting twinges in my bad knee. At last, just as the rain began to fall once more, pattering on our backs like a gentle reminder that it was three o'clock and time for tea, she spoke:

"You know I'm often away, and stay in a bed and breakfast or with friends. When I look at myself in somebody else's mirror, I always get a shock. It's like a different me. When I'm at home and I look in the mirror, I recognize myself."

As she steered my wheelchair across the allotments towards the Portaloo, enthusing over the persistence of bees, I let her answer sink into my soul. And when Terry and I reached home, drenched to the skin but glowing from the wind and our exertions, I stopped to look at myself in the hall mirror. It's something I'd avoided doing before, disliking my wayward hair and sagging chin. Heather was right. I recognized myself: this is Jan, who has lived in this body for over sixty years and, since moving to this place, collected enough happy memories to last a thousand years.

I am learning to love myself, because I'm home at last.
I Meet the Gods

Charlotte Rattray

I

What is she doing? asks Zeus, staring down from the tower he lives in now. Hermes rolls over in bed, props himself up on his elbows, his eyes fluttering in post-orgasmic glow. Who? he asks. Zeus points to a bedroom, where I sit in front of my laptop, looking at melancholic yet aesthetic images of cats. What is she doing? he says again. Mind your own business, I say, without turning around. What's it got to do with you?

I know you, Zeus says. I know your kind. Centuries ago, it would have been my business, I can feel it in my bones.

Gods don't have bones, I say. You're just a concept I happen to believe in.

Zeus manifests in my bedroom like a bad dream, looking like a young man with an old soul, or maybe the other way around.

There is potential there, he says. You could be something. Change the world. Bring something back.

That sounds like a lot of work, I say. Why would I do that?

Zeus shrugs. In the old times, he says, I would have made you. If the gods give you potential, you owe it to the world to use it.

But it is not the old times, I say. I owe you nothing.

He sighs. Even if you did, I wouldn't force you, he says. Those cat pictures will make you happier than being a hero ever did for anyone.

I close my laptop.

But I'm not happy, I say.

That is your problem, not mine, Zeus says, and goes back to bed.

II

Zeus watches me have coffee with my friends and shakes his head. I miss the old days, Hera says behind him. When this all mattered. Zeus turns around and shakes his head. She can hear us, he says. Hera tilts her head. What do you mean?

She believes, Zeus says. She believes and she has potential.

Hera stares at me, back home in my room now.

Could you not, I say. I'm trying to concentrate.

III

Why are you here? I ask Athena the first time she settles down on my couch while I am cooking. She doesn't reply, says nothing, disappears halfway through an episode of House, and leaves a box of tea leaves on my table the very next day. A week later, I read her tarot, tell her about the tall handsome stranger she will meet. She doesn't say a word. She never does. The world has rendered her mute, like so many women before her. I learn to know her in the way she slices bread, the crumpled blanket she uses to sleep on the couch, the little huff she does when something is funny, the way that her face softens when I put on Nancy Sinatra. I buy a pullout couch after I find her asleep for the third time. After that, she doesn't seem to sleep anywhere else.

VI

I have a date, and Aphrodite knocks on the door early in the morning, chatting quietly about confidence and owning yourself while she combs my hair. You are beautiful, she says, envy in her voice. Are you going to turn my hair into snakes, I ask, and she laughs, a sound like crisp winter air. People don't understand, she says. I was protecting Medusa. Will you protect me? I ask. She smiles, sad. I don't know how, she answers, and Athena rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. I don't know how to do anything anymore. I take the brush from her and comb her hair.

VII

It's Christmas Eve and I am in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to cook for one human and two goddesses, when Dionysos appears. Don't worry, he says, I've got you covered. I sit on the table, perched like a cat, and watch him work while sampling wines. The trick, he says, is to assume more people will come, and they'll be there. Who are you expecting? I ask. Family, he says. We race to finish a bottle of whiskey I have in my cupboards and he falls asleep on the carpet. Aphrodite lays a blanket on him and joins Athena on the couch. The next day, the family arrives: Poseidon smells of sea and longing, gives me a hug and speaks to the fish in my aquarium. Hades' eyes glow red, but he smiles and hands me a bouquet. Persephone picked them, he says. She's coming a little later. Hermes yawns, nods to me, and falls asleep on the couch. Nemesis lays a hand on my shoulder. I am sorry for the time they used my name to justify those pictures, she says. I burned them from the inside out. Aries smiles a smile that can make grown men forget their manners and says, I helped. Hera hands me a pocketknife, says it slices flesh and cheese alike, depending on the occasion. Zeus walks in and says, you need a bigger house.

VIII

It is February and I am trying to finish an essay when Zeus walks in. Come on, he says, we have an appointment. I don't argue. What is the point in arguing with a god? He takes me to the beach, where Poseidon is throwing sticks for his dogs. Here, Zeus says, what do you think? He points to a house on the shore that looks weathered by the storm, with big windows and a For Sale sign on the porch. Do they like it? I ask. Your opinion matters too, he says. He takes me inside, explains who will be where. There are five bedrooms and a garden on the other side, a pool, a firepit, a basement. Is it not too small? I say. It is just right, Zeus says. Poseidon nods. Close to the sea, he says. Grounded in the earth, Persephone says. Persephone likes it, Hades says. Athena smiles. Aphrodite laughs, the light is beautiful. Peaceful, Nemesis says. Then we take it, I say.

IX

Hera, lounging on my bed when I come home one day, says she wants to talk to me. We walk past the room full of books that Aphrodite and Athena share, down the stairs and past Persephone who is tending to her plants. We sit in the reading nook, legs curled under us in the hanging chairs. I want to know what you want, she says. I don't know, I say. She nods. Then it is time you and I spent some time together. Athena says you need it. I smile. She is your favourite, Hera says, a hint of envy in her eyes. Don't hurt her, I say. I know your history with envy. Don't make Nemesis sad, please. Hera shakes her head. Those days are over, she says, I am three hundred fifty years sober of that.

X

I sit in the car, windows rolled down, as Hera drives us down the highway. I don't ask where we are going. It doesn't matter.

I want, I say, to fulfil my potential.

Hera smiles. Zeus told you, she says. Of course, I say. That's how this all started. What is potential, she says, but following your heart? That, I say, is the most useless thing you have ever said to me. She throws her head back, laughter roaring like five hundred swords being drawn at the same time. You, she says, are something else.

XI

I want to make an impact, I say.

On whom? she asks as we turn into a dark driveway. Overshadowed by trees, the sun sets on the long and winding road.

The world, I say, the people. I want to do my part.

You recycle, she says.

That's not enough, I say as we pull up to a ruin of a mansion.

Grand expectations tend to be disappointed, she says, especially if they are of yourself.

We park, get out of the car, look around.

What is this? I say.

Your purpose, she says. What do you want to do with it?

XII

I come out of the mansion and she has not moved. It's a shell, I say. Yes, she says, will you fill it? With what? I ask. Love, of course, she says. And the gods.

XIII

Hephaistos is delighted when I call him. How you doin', doll? he says. I smile, the raspiness of his voice laying around me like a cloak. Meet me, I say. I need your help.

He stands behind me before I finish.

Always, he says, for you, sweetheart.

Teach me how to mend things that are broken, I say.

Will you give up books for it? he asks, will you give up what you love?

I say, I can learn new things and return to old ones later. Athena smiles in the background. I have taught you well, she says with her eyes.

XIV

I blow out the candles on my birthday cake. Thirty, Zeus says. It's been a decade. I shake my head. Time is not linear, I say, no time has passed, and yet eternity is just around the corner. Athena kisses me on the cheek. Mortal years don't matter to those who run with the gods. Aphrodite gives me a book with smoothie recipes. They are delicious, she says. Persephone has grown me vines that she etches into my arms, a tattoo that lives. Before we continue, I say, Hephaistos and I have something to show you. Hera smiles. We pile into the cars, drive the three hours to the mansion, Zeus complaining all the way. Why are we not just going there? he whines. Hermes puts a hand on his leg, quiets him down.

The mansion is lit up, Hera standing in the doorway. She cheated, I say, a smile on my face. What is this place? Poseidon says. It's so far from the sea. What's wrong with the house we bought you? Hades says. Hephaistos growls, be quiet, all of you. They walk into the house and scatter like children, finding their spaces.

One by one, the other gods appear, called by their family. The titans find a shed to live in that reminds them of their caves. Hercules kisses me on the cheek, says, I can't believe this. Odysseus sighs, I am home.

Hephaistos and I stand before the sanctuary of the gods. Good job, kiddo, he says. You rebuilt Olympus, but better. But where is your room? Hera says. I'm going back to my apartment, I say, I have an essay to finish. My work here is done. My potential is fulfilled. Time to finish my PhD.

XV

Forty years pass, with the gods on my shoulder. I spend my holidays in the house I built with my magic. Athena proofreads all my work. One day, the doctors find a tumour in my brain. Zeus frantically tries to fix it, calls them all, tries to convince me, but I shake my head. I go home, draw a bath, call Aphrodite and Athena. Why are you doing this? Aphrodite asks, tears streaming down her face as she sprinkles rose petals into the water. Athena puts a hand on her arm and sends her back to the house. She looks at me. Is this what you want? she says, voice like death and knowledge. It is the most beautiful thing I've heard. Yes, I say, I know what happens next. Don't worry. I sink into the bath. Are you sure about this? she says as she puts her hands on my shoulders. I smile. Never been more sure. She presses me under the water, waits until my lungs are full of it, until my heart stops, until my brain falls quiet. She scoops my body up and carries it home, to the mansion I built. Lays me down at the feet of the gods. Persephone touches the vines on my arm, calls me to her, Hades cradles my head, promises me an afterlife like nobody else, and I take a breath and say, don't you get it? You all believe in me. I will never die.
A Long Convalescence

Judith Skillman

The small things tell you you are home—

cotton sheets, linen clouds, Dutch rabbits

nibbling greens. It is close to sunset

when you remember why you went away.

Never again, I swear on the Bible

I hear you say to yourself as if no one

can hear you. Mama hurries the last crumbs

into a basket, sister sings a song.

However many hours He wore that crown—

that's how long you lay anaesthetized

while the surgeon scraped your nerves

and stretched your bones.

Meanwhile, the jackrabbit comes to blend in

against tan grounds and cottonwood.

Windows hold a million trees full of ganglia.

Accept that for now you will be going

between only two rooms—one with a bed,

one with a sink—its grave porcelain eye.

Contributors

Nick Askew is an artist and illustrator living and working in Edinburgh. He graduated from Northumbria University in 2010 with a BA Hons in Graphic Design, he has since created work for Bloodaxe Books, Freight Books, and Alnwick Castle. His work has been recently been exhibited at The People's History Museum in Manchester. Nick works in a range of media and is concerned with infusing his work with joy, absurdity, and wonder. You can find him on social media @alittlebitaskew.

Lola Gaztañaga Baggen is a multinational, anti-nationalist polyglot with a penchant for black clothes, colourful scarves, and anything folklore. Having lived in the wonderfully gothic Edinburgh for almost three years now, she takes full inspiration to write the dark, magical, and disturbed, but a childhood spent in Holland and Spain means she also specialises in dyke reviews and siesta manuals.

Sofía Ballesteros (Mexico City, 1979) is the author of the children's book La Princesa Rana (Textofilia, 2010), and the short story collections La Sirena voladora y otros relatos (Caligrama, 2015) and Cuentos de Navigay (Libros del Marqués, 2019). She was selected to participate in the inaugural Write Toscana retreat with Helen McClory. She has acted in the films La Maldita Primavera and Puta y Amada, directed by Marc Ferrer. She has also appeared in several music videos for the band Papa Topo. She lives in Barcelona. Follow her on Instagram @valkiriatropical.

Kirsteen Bell is a writer, poet, and crofter. She is a regular contributor to the Lochaber Times and has had her work published in Gutter, Northwords Now, Caught by the River, Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness, and Stravaig: Geopoetics. She lives and works by the shore of Loch Eil in Lochaber with her young family. You can find Kirsteen on Twitter and Instagram @KirsteenBell.

Ruth Bradshaw combines creative writing with a part-time role in environmental policy. 'Capel Cwmorthin', her flash piece inspired by the same area as 'The World Methusala Made', was published in Flash #MyLandmarks in November 2019 and is available to listen to on Placecloud. 'Life Cycle', a piece drawing on her experiences as a conservation volunteer in London will be published by The Clearing in 2020. When not writing or working, Ruth can often be found in the woods near her home in South London and occasionally on Twitter @ruthc_b

Sasha Saben Callaghan is a writer and digital artist, living on the east coast of Scotland. She was a winner of the 2016 'A Public Space' Emerging Writer Fellowship and the 2019 Pen to Paper Awards. Her illustrations have featured in a wide range of exhibitions, journals and magazines. Sasha's lived experience of disability and impairment is a major influence on her work. Find her on Twitter @SabenCallaghan and on Instagram @SashaSaben.

Jennifer Dickinson is a graduate of Hollins University. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, The Florida Review, Blackbird, Cosmonauts Avenue, Gravel, Barren Magazine, and Inlandia. She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Raised in Florida, Jennifer now works as a book coach in Los Angeles.

Luciana Erregue-Sacchi is a Canadian Argentinian art historian and writer based in Edmonton, AB. Canada. Luciana is a Banff Centre alumni, editor of The Polyglot Mulitlingual Magazine, and Edmonton Arts Council Artist in Residence at Action for Healthy communities. Her work has appeared in the anthology Looking Back, Moving Forward edited by Julie C. Robinson (Mawenzi House, 2018) and elsewhere.

Mariann Evans is a secondary school English teacher from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Mariann currently lives in Alloa and has a deep interest in folklore and the supernatural, both of which form the basis of many of her short stories. She has just finished drafting her first novel – a murder mystery set in a fictional Scottish town – and is looking to query within the next couple of months.

Jude Gray is an Edinburgh-based writer who has been putting pen to paper and creating stories and poems for the past ten years. She has a number of unpublished novels as well as some published short fiction under her belt.

Toonika Guha is an editor, writer, and audiobooks producer. She is currently based in Delhi, India. Her nonfiction works have appeared in National Geographic Traveller India, ThePrint, The Quint, Firstpost, and more. She is currently working on a series of short stories based in 'Joba Lane', where she uses different literary devices to discuss various issues, including globalisation, gender, sexuality, and climate change.

Claire Hinchliffe is the author of numerous short stories, two novels and some suspect poetry. Her story, 'Dancing Crimson', was published in the charitable anthology No Good Deed in 2019, and she hopes to write more in 2020.

Alexis Keir was born and now lives in London, UK, but was raised in the Bedfordshire town of Luton. His background is in social work and for the last 12 years he has been Director of Elfrida Rathbone Camden, a London-based charity working with families and young disabled people. Alexis spent part of his childhood living in Saint Vincent, the Caribbean island from where his parents migrated to England in 1960.

Alexis has written for The London Magazine and under the pseudonym Alex Stratford in E17 Stories, a local anthology of stories from the London Borough of Waltham Forest. More of his writing can be found at the blog And So She Thinks. In September 2019, Alexis was selected to be one of the participants in Spread The Word's London Writers Awards.

Milagros Lasarte is an Argentinian writer. She has a BA in English from Sorbonne Université and an MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her work is featured in the From Arthur's Seat anthology (2019) and on her new blog, Footnote. You can find Milagros on Instagram @footnote_ml.

Wes Lee was raised in a working-class household in Northern England, Wes Lee now lives in New Zealand. She has two collections of poetry: Shooting Gallery (Steele Roberts, 2016), and a pamphlet Body, Remember (Eyewear Publishing, 2017). Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, New Writing Scotland, The London Magazine, Poetry London, among others. Most recently she was awarded the Poetry New Zealand Prize 2019 by Massey University Press.

Quinn Lui is a Chinese-Canadian student who has a tendency to collect too many mugs, then dry too many flowers, and then run out of mugs to store them in. Their work has appeared in Occulum, Synaesthesia Magazine, Augur Magazine, and elsewhere, and they are the author of the micro-chapbook teething season for new skin (L'Éphémère Review, 2018). You can find them @flowercryptid on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, or wherever the moon is brightest.

Melanie Maclennan is an aspiring, nineteen-year-old poet from the Highlands. She is an observer of all things mundane but fascinating, sore but real. She has just begun a degree in Literature and is trying to fall back in love with writing.

Ethel Maqeda has lived in Sheffield since 2005. She started writing as a way of keeping a connection with the various places she calls home. Shona and Ndebele storytelling traditions provide the inspiration that glues Ethel's stories together. Her short stories have appeared in a number of issues of Route 57, the University of Sheffield's creative writing journal, Verse Matters (Valley Press), Chains: Unheard Voices (Margo Press), and Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press). When she's not writing, Ethel works in an FE college supporting students with additional learning needs and relaxes by going to the theatre.

Juliette F. Martin is a graduate of the Creative Writing master's programme at Edinburgh Napier University. Her work frequently explores the allure and danger of forests, mountains, oceans, and other wild places. She is currently working on her first novel.

Jan McCarthy lives in Birmingham with her husband. She is a published author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, including, most recently, three collections published by Bequem Press (Adelaide). She has been shortlisted for the Asham Literary Award, and is featured on the 2019 Writers' HQ Wall of Fame. She runs local writing group Fun With A Pen, which she founded ten years ago. More of her writing can be found on her website and on Facebook. Jan is also a keen community and allotment gardener.

Becca McGilloway has an MFA in Poetry from the Stonecoast Creative Writing program at the University of Southern Maine. Her poems have been published in Spires Magazine and States of the Union. A former graduate of Emerson College, she resides near Boston and is passionate about her work as an ESL tutor.

Sasha R. Moghimi-Kian is a Miami-born daughter of immigrant parents from Iran and Chile. She has been published in the Miami Herald, The Hong Kong Review, and the PEN Center USA anthology entitled Only Light Can Do That. She was the 2017 Emerging Writer Fellow for the Aspen Institute and is also a Tin House and VONA/Voices of Our Nation alumna. She loves spinning fantasy worlds but is learning to embrace reality. When not working or writing, she loves spending time with her family and searching for manatees in the canal outside. She believes the manatees have stories to tell.

Christopher Moore is an LGBT+ writer. He is a graduate of English from Queen's University Belfast and has a Master of Arts in TV Fiction Writing from Glasgow Caledonian University. Christopher is also an alumnus of the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course, and the Fireworks Young Writers Programme with Tinderbox Theatre Company. In addition to a number of playwriting successes, his short fiction has been accepted and published among various organisations, such as the Octagon Theatre's 'Best of Bolton' day (2017 and 2018); Pendora Literary Magazine (2018); Flash Fiction Armagh (2018), including a published anthology; The Bramley (2019); Nightingale & Sparrow; The Mark Literary Review (2019); and Naked Frank Theatre's 'Tales of the Monsters in my Head' event at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London (14–16 August 2019).

Vina Nguyen's writings have found homes online at Every Day Fiction and The Selkie. She also writes songs, gigs with her groovy, indie-soul band, and attempts to resurrect houseplants. She's currently seeking representation for her first novel and editing her second.

Alice Pain is an illustrator from Bristol; her drawings predominantly depict women combined with symbolism, mythology, magic, and folklore. Alongside her sister, Charlotte, she co-manages and facilitates The Drawing Group Bristol; a community location drawing group bringing life to disused spaces whilst enabling a safe space for equal opportunity and creativity. She is currently using her work as a tool for empowerment, understanding and self expression. Find her on Instagram @alice_illustration_.

Charlotte Pain (Witchy Woman) lives in Bristol, England. She loves making art about women and magic (spoiler: women are magic) she is also interested in mental illness, equality and navigating diet culture. Charlotte co-runs a community drawing group in Bristol with her sister, creatively called, The Drawing Group Bristol. Find her on Instagram @witchy_woman_art and thunderandroses_.

Nathan Pascu is a trans writer who likes to tell stories that make people feel. He is currently finishing his last year of undergraduate study, working towards a bachelor's degree in English and Film at Edinburgh Napier University.

Ely Percy's first publication was a letter-cum-poem in Big! magazine in 1994. Since then, they've released a memoir Cracked (JKP, 2002), graduated with distinction from Glasgow University's MPhil in Creative Writing (2004) and contributed over fifty short stories to literary journals (New Writing Scotland, Scotsman Orange, Edinburgh Review ...). Percy's debut novel, Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz, was published in March 2019 by Knight Errant Press. Their second novel, Duck Feet (Monstrous Regiment), is due for publication in 2020; 'Left' is an extract from this work.

Charlotte Rattray was born in Germany and emigrated to Scotland in 2014 to study film and visual culture. She got married in 2018 and now lives with her wife and dog in Aberdeen. She writes about the fantastical mixed with the everyday, mental health, and girls loving girls.

Stan Reed is a visual and sound artist specialising in surreal multimedia creations including digital and traditional hand-cut collages, photography, and abstract soundscapes. As an experimental musician, he performed in Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Broken Penis Orchestra, and Dried Up Corpse. In 2004, he was also a member of Steven Stapleton's first live Nurse With Wound live show in 20 years. Stan created the Wooden Octopus Skull Experimental Music Festival with wm Rage and Leslie Nichols of Enterruption Records in 2004 and 2005. He also ran several DIY record labels including PsychoChrist Productions, PsychForm Records, and Gnarled Forest Recordings. Stan is focusing on creating therapeutic art for himself and others. As a survivor of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he is passionate about sharing his experience, and teaching, inspiring and encouraging other people to create art to promote their healing and well-being. Visit @stan_reed_art on Instagram and Facebook to see more of his work.

Aimée Rogers is originally from Northern Ireland. She is a freelance translator now living in London. She holds an MA in Specialised Translation from the University of Westminster and loves to explore the role of the translator in nonfiction works. You can follow her musings on Twitter @AJR_Translation.

Lucy Rose is a working-class and LGBT+ writer and director of all things weird and wonderful. Her latest film, She Lives Alone, was funded by the BFI Network. Her work is the musings and ravings of a woman who is being driven slightly mad by the world around her. Lucy's work was most recently published in the Little Book of Fairy Tales anthology, Fearless Femme, Crêpe & Penn, and the upcoming WOMXN anthology. You can find Lucy on Instagram and Twitter at @lucyrosecreates.

Shivani Sekar is studying Medicine at the University of Cambridge, St Catharine's College. She has had poems published in The Kindling, in addition to a magazine by The Cambridge Poetry and Prose Society.

Judith Skillman is the author of eighteen books, including two new and selected poems. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Poetry, Zyzzyva, and numerous other journals. She is a faculty member at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, WA. Visit www.judithskillman.com.

Susan Taylor is an ex-shepherd who has become rather a turncoat now, with much sympathy for the plight of the wild wolf. She has eight published poetry collections, including Temporal Bones, published by Oversteps Books in 2016. Susan is a keen performer of her poetry and recently developed her first solo poetry show La Loba – Enchanting the Wolf.

John Tinneny was born and raised in Belfast, John now lives and studies in Glasgow. Writing mostly poetry, he has had work published in From Glasgow To Saturn and The Kindling, amongst others.

Lydia Unsworth is the author of two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres (Knives Forks & Spoons, 2018) and Nostalgia for Bodies (Winner, 2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize). She has two chapbooks forthcoming in 2019 from above/ground press and Ghost City Press. Recent work can be found in Ambit, Litro, Tears in the Fence, Banshee, Ink Sweat and Tears, and others. Longlisted for the Women Poets' Prize 2018. Manchester/Amsterdam. Twitter @lydiowanie.

Marjorie Waterman lives in Miami, Florida, and is standing up for justice and down for downward dog. She is a retired GED teacher and taught classes in a Miami-Dade County jail for twenty years. 'What Color Am I?' is Marjorie's debut publication. She has also written a creative memoir entitled Please Pardon My Inmates, a humorous, inspiring, and bittersweet account of her jailhouse experience. Upon retirement and inspired by her students, Marjorie began enrolling in writing classes at Florida International University and Miami-Dade Writer's Institute. She was recently interviewed by Diane Gottlieb to share her life story on Diane's blog and is currently seeking an agent for her memoir. To learn more, please visit dianegottlieb.com.

Alexandra Ye is a fiction writer from Great Mills, Maryland. She is currently undergoing her postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh.

## Contents

  1. Editorial Board
  2. Introduction
    1. Sam Le Butt, Chief Editor
  3. Foreword
    1. Christina Neuwirth
  4. Home
    1. Sasha R. Moghimi-Kian
  5. One Day They Landed
    1. Jennifer Dickinson
  6. I Love You Sugarplum
    1. Alexandra Ye
  7. God Save
    1. Shivani Sekar
  8. White
    1. Nathan Pascu
  9. The Golden Mean
    1. Luciana Erregue-Sacchi
  10. Left
    1. Ely Percy
  11. The Forager of Stories
    1. Toonika Guha
  12. Robot de cocina1
    1. Sofía Ballesteros
  13. Kitchen Robot1
    1. Sofía Ballesteros
  14. Municipal Villanelle (an interlude)
    1. Lydia Unsworth
  15. Waith and Wrack
    1. Juliette F. Martin
  16. All the Vulnerable Things
    1. Vina Nguyen
  17. The Milestones 
    1. Wes Lee
  18. The Mermaid's Grave
    1. Mariann Evans
  19. Flotsam at Dough
    1. John Tinneny
  20. storm season
    1. Quinn Lui
  21. Mosaicism
    1. Milagros Lasarte
  22. Where the Heart is
    1. Lola Gaztañaga Baggen
  23. Are We Having Fun Yet?
    1. Becca McGilloway
  24. Some Kind of Love
    1. Ethel Maqeda
  25. A poem for my hometown
    1. Melanie Maclennan
  26. The Fleeting Tale of Demeter
    1. Lucy Rose
  27. The Bursting of the Dam
    1. Claire Hinchliffe
  28. Home
    1. Christopher Moore
  29. Taigh nam Fithich (House of Ravens)
    1. Kirsteen Bell
  30. The World Methusala Made
    1. Ruth Bradshaw
  31. Winter Threads
    1. Susan Taylor
  32. What Color Am I?
    1. Marjorie Waterman
  33. End and Beginning
    1. Alexis Keir
  34. Simple
    1. Jude Gray
  35. Somebody Else's Mirror
    1. Jan McCarthy
  36. I Meet the Gods
    1. Charlotte Rattray
  37. A Long Convalescence
    1. Judith Skillman
  38. Contributors

## Landmarks

  1. Cover
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Start of Content
  4. Table of Contents

