Issue #6 December 2024

Short Fuse

By Nathalie Valentina Zender

Her head high and her standards higher.
She locks her heart when they inquire
fearing it can’t handle a spark;
avoiding heartbreak leaves no mark.

Play it safe, she tells herself,
fairy tales are for the shelf.
Thoughts keep her awake at night;
they always end in fight or flight.

Her heart sits on a short fuse;
has more to give and more to lose.
A game of chance, bravery, and hope;
the risk too high, no time to mope

with goals and dreams as big as hers.
The life she chose; what she prefers.
‘Till someone can hold her just right,
she’ll walk alone, no end in sight.

Resistance

By Anthony Elijah Bell

The world is simply, a stage.

A stage for the man or woman with the greatest deeds.

This environment – yes, this environment,
is a garden full of many different roses,
that began with a faithless seed.

The moment that seed found a purpose,
it began to grow,
And the most beautiful pedals you’d ever see on a flower began to emerge.

What more can I say? Nature just couldn’t resist.

I find myself in the center of that same garden,
But this time; this time, I’m full of hope.

“Everything will be just fine,” are my exact words as the wind blows.

What more can I say?
The signs just couldn’t resist.

The only mistakes are the moments you didn’t learn from.

On lost roads is where purposes emerge from.

Tonight, the clouds above me are crying tears of pain,
As if the sun doesn’t shine brighter the very next day.

There’s a pain present.
A pain the clouds just couldn’t resist.

I can see why the skies are dark sometimes,
Grey, gloomy, and full of anger.

I was only a child when I was told a thunder’s roar is a sense of warning for danger.

It feels like the end days are near,
but our lives are just beginning,
So, I ask not for whom the bell tolls,
But why is it always ringing?

It’s simply, just a sound we cannot resist.

Resistance.

Gaia

By Lesi Detrow Albina

The blond hair of a child—
fall leaves burned on the ground
The soft skin of her hand—
smooth texture on the birch.
The bear sleeping on the iced surface—her mother’s belly
Your eyes, blue, green, brown hurricane, watching me at all times.
I’m a sinner,
I use your body,
I drill,
I vomit my substance,
I spit on you: Mother
She is beautiful even as it burns, as it blurs, and cries from the gas
I’m a hardened body with some manners, tangled in the automation, away from my species.
Help me Mother, I can’t see my child.

Merry Little Christmas

By Karen J. Birdsell

She rested at an empty table in the restaurant. Her purchases propped across from her as if they were company. Stranger’s conversations swirled around her with excitement of the season and she heard the speakers overhead. 

Let her heart be light.

It had been four years. 

“Why would you even bother acknowledging such a horrible anniversary? Her friends had asked. “Isn’t that counter-productive?” 

But she didn’t see it like that. She saw her acknowledgment as progress. A consistent promise of hope. If she’d learned anything, it was that you had to allow yourself to feel things. All things. So, in this place, at this moment, she let the feelings of grief and anger glide over her like a fog that dissipated as soon as she didn’t fight it.

From now on all troubles would be out of sight.

If she could survive that day, the day that scratched its fingernails off at rock bottom, the day her life moved without her, the day she felt like she’d never be alive again, if she could endure that day, then she could withstand anything. And she had. However bad things had gotten since then, it still wasn’t as bad as that day.

The waiter arrived with her hearty meal and she savored it. 

Through the years, we all will be together.

More feelings came up so she listened. Lonely. The season hadn’t cozied into her heart the way it usually did. Decorations felt flat and company was distant. 

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

Even still, she knew she was whole. She had accomplished amazing things and there was even more to come. It was a good life. Someday, maybe, she would experience and give an unfathomable love that her heart couldn’t even understand yet. The hope was there.

If the fates allow.

She left a generous tip on the table, put on her jacket, and gathered her gifts. Her heart sighed and she gave a private smile to the day that would never be again. 

So, have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

GENERATION OPIOID

By Rachael Quisel

“Oprah invited you for tea.”

“Again?” I roll down my waistband. “That’s four invites this month.” 

Kendra places the syringe horizontal between her teeth so her hands are free to heat the cooker. “Five if you count Montecito.” She takes the syringe out of her mouth and digs around my groin for a vein. “Stop wriggling, Liv.” I go still, and she injects.

The pleasure-rush pours over me like hot honey. “Tell Oprah no.”

“What’s your excuse this time?” She strokes my cheek.

I draw her hand to my mouth and kiss her fingertips. “I have to prioritize tennis with Venus Williams.”

“Of course,” she says. “How could I forget your date with Venus?”

It’s a game we played. She made-believe I was someone important, and I made-believe we weren’t junkies. The last time I saw Kendra was the night she dropped me on a curb in front of a rehab clinic deep inside of Queens, New York. New Beginnings. So why did it feel like my life was looped; every day a copy of the one before?

###

Between the morning I crawled off that gurney and now, there are eight months of sobriety and savings. Enough for a deposit and first month’s rent on a studio apartment. My face is no longer skeletal. My chips are lined up like tin soldiers on my just-for-looks fireplace mantle. Dating anyone isn’t top or bottom of mind. But Kendra isn’t anyone.

I’m avoiding her, and she knows it. So I’m surprised when I get a normal-sounding message from her. Like I never went blue on her bedroom floor. Like the last time she touched me wasn’t to blast narcan up my nose. She doesn’t talk about using, but she doesn’t talk about not using, either.

Then last night she’s in my DMs. Come out with me, Liv. One dance. One.

Some other time.

I think the conversation was over. What more is there to say? But she keeps it up.

Does that mean you’re staying in for another birthday?

I’d completely forgotten. I was turning twenty-eight on Sunday. I have plans.

Liv. You have no plans.

I wait for a clever response to come; it doesn’t. I don’t like to make birthdays into a big thing.

Which is why we’re going to make it into a small thing and binge watch crap TV and eat too many carbs. See you Sunday.

###

On my last birthday, Kendra and I biked the metal-slatted bridge to Roosevelt Island. Our tires went fwap fwap fwap in the rain. We saw straight down to the East River foaming underneath. Soon, we were biking on a sheet of ice–our tires skidding out of control and us wrangling them in. Kendra and I were the only two out there, our sports bras soaked through while we squealed and kissed like some cliché montage.

There’s a perfume, like wine turned to vinegar, then she steps into my place. Did I leave the door unlocked? Well, her taking liberties is nothing new. 

“You’re here,” I say, but she blazes right through me. Why is it called the road to recovery? Nothing about this felt linear. Seeing her again. I was going in circles.

“Oh,” she says and does an easy 360, taking in the high-ceilings and new furniture. As she turns, her skirt drifts up. “Oh, oh,” she says. At least she’s wearing underwear. I can’t get a good look at her pupils. Are they pinned to the back of her head?

She drops her purse and strokes a tiny cactus. “It’s very you.”

“It is.” I pick up her purse. My hand hovers on its zipper pull. For a moment, I’m overcome with hunger. What’s inside doesn’t matter, I decide. I decide twice. I drop the purse and press my palm into the crook of my elbow.

She plops on my couch and tucks her feet under her like a cat. Her energy is leaching into the place, and I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“You want popcorn?” I ask.

“Is that even a question?”

I toss a bag in the microwave and read the shit I taped on my fridge.

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot—

“Liv?”

There’s a pop, and I startle. The kernels are going off. I turn around. “Yeah?”

She fingers a pink lighter. “Ready to make some bad decisions?” 

I cut my eyes at her. “What?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She waves at a round, rainbow cake that has magically appeared on the coffee table. There’s even a candle in it. “Eat cake with reckless abandon, binge watch desperate people doing stupid things. You know, bad decisions.”

“Carbs, right,” I say. “Sure. Thanks for the cake.”

She was being sweet but something was off. I hoped seeing her again would be more…what? Joy-soaked? Like it used to be?

Again, that craving. I’m sweating with want for the rush, the pleasure waves. I go into my bathroom and splash water on my face. My sponsor said this would be hard. That in my head Kendra and smack were tethered.

When I step out, the lights are off and the candle is lit. “Nope, no birthday song. Small thing. You promised.”

“No song,” she says. “Just blow out the flame.”

So I blow it out, and we bite into red velvet with pink cream filling.

Kendra tugs on her hair. “I got a call this morning.”

“Oh?” I respond before I can stop myself.

“The President,” she says.

My eyes fill, so I squeeze them shut. “What did he say?”

“He said he was tired of you dodging him, so he booked you a flight on Air Force One. It’ll be just the two of you–30,000 feet in the air.”

I pretend to consider my options. “Just the two of us?”

After a beat, she says, “Yeah, just the two of us.”

I reach for her then. To hell with the no relationships rule. But my arms pass through nothing. I open my eyes. No Kendra. Of course she left when I made a move. I’m so stupid. The cake with the candle is gone, too. No lingering red velvet taste in my mouth, even. It’s like she was never here.

She needs to know that she can’t keep doing this to me. I punch out the bitter message but, before I send, I drop my phone face down on the couch. It slips over the corduroy curve and disappears, eaten by the cushion.

Why do I do this to myself?

But I know why.

It’s our game.

Kendra makes believe I’m someone important, and I make believe she’s alive.