JUNE 2026

“Are you sure?” She slowly stood. Took a delicate step closer. “Maybe it needs more time. We could go for a walk, or … ?”

Her voice trailed off. The muscles along her neck tensed. Her lips moved silently, but what could she say? Ethan shifted his books to one arm. Reached for his phone. He hesitated, but showed her the TrueThink verdict anyway.

Adeline’s face fell. She slumped back into her seat, face hidden behind both palms, her hair a dark veil.

Ethan glanced one more time at the screen. He spared a last look at Adeline, then finally retreated.

---

IS THAT A SEMICOLON?
By Jeff Radwell

You’re sixteen. You live near a lake that is genuinely beautiful.

He wants to sit by the lake. You know a spot. Of course you know a spot. You’re sixteen and you live near a lake and you’ve been remembering spots for exactly this moment without knowing that’s what you were doing.

The dock lights are on. The water does the thing water does at sundown, which is flicker to make life feel profound yet fleeting in a way that’s incredible when you’re sixteen and has diminishing returns thereafter. You’re talking. He’s talking. It’s going fine.

Then he reaches into his backpack and takes out an electric toothbrush.

You watch him. You’re patient. You have a working theory that there’s an explanation for this.

He puts it on his wrist and his skin turns black.

“What are you doing?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” he says. “Everything’s cool.”

He’s modified it. He has ink. He begins tattooing his own arm next to you with a modified electric toothbrush.

You think about the word clean. You think about the word cool and what it means that he’s used it to describe a situation that he might not have created entirely for your benefit but that you are nonetheless present for.

“Is that a good idea,” you say. “Is that clean?”

Then he takes your hand.

You’ll think about this later, the taking of your hand, how it read initially as something else, something sweet, something normal that happens by a lake at sundown when the lights are on the water. How one second you’re sixteen and sitting somewhere beautiful and the next second a boy is pressing a modified electric toothbrush into the skin on top of your hand and you’re screaming.

The dot is small.

It’ll stay forever.

You carry the stupidity of sixteen, which wasn’t even stupidity exactly, just not yet knowing that a boy reaching into a backpack by a lake at sundown might be reaching for a toothbrush to stab you with.

---

Pull the Anchor
By Rhett Arens

Zipper and I sat facing each other at opposite ends of the boat. The cooler could be reached from either end. Zipper had the motor; I had the anchor. We were sitting in ten feet of water casting towards the weed line. Zipper’s father-in-law Don sat between us on the middle bench. He was in his usual mood, so we kept asking him to hand us beers. Poking the bear.

The bottles piled up next to the gas can as the afternoon wore on. The sun slipped behind the clouds; I put my shirt back on. Don lost another one just as I landed a keeper and dropped it into the basket. Zipper and I looked at each other; we knew something was coming.

Earlier in the day we threw Don a bone and invited him out on the boat with us. He always talked about fishing, but we never saw him catch anything. He kept taking off his cap and scratching at a spot on the top of his head. We didn’t feel bad for him, at least I didn’t because he was a jerk most of the time.

“Don, would you grab me another beer?” I finally asked. “I’ll have one too,” said Zipper. “Go deep for the cold ones,” I added. He pretended like he didn’t hear me, so I reached over his line and grabbed two beers out of the cooler and tossed one to Zipper.

“You guys have a drinking problem,” Don blurted.

Zipper fired back, “We sure do. We put you in charge of the cooler,” and snickered. I twisted the cap off and took a slug. I liked it when Zipper got rolling. It loosened me up and gave me a little rope. I’m normally the quiet one, but Zipper can get me going.

Zipper and I go back to grade school. We grew up a block apart. I was at his wedding and he was in mine. We went to our first concert together, the Doobie Brothers and Foghat. That night I overindulged with brandy and ditch weed. Zippy had my back and basically carried me out, loaded me in the car, and got me home. He said the Doobies suck anyway.

“I don’t know how you guys maintain family responsibilities and drink all weekend like this,” Don said, staring at his bobber. I looked at Zippy and crossed my eyes behind Don’s back.

“Hey Don, why don’t you have a beer and tell us how we should be raising our kids.” Zipper could be brutal, even to his father-in-law.

I doubled down. “Don, grab me another one and help yourself. Those beers won’t drink themselves.”

Don turned his head and looked at me.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. Don was in his mid-sixties, had been an engineer or something at a med-tech company. I always thought that explained his righteousness.

“Yes, something is wrong—no fish,” he came back with.

“How deep is your bobber set?” I asked.

“Six feet,” he claimed.

“Try eight-and-a-half,” I offered.

He cranked in the line, reset the bobber deeper and cast it out. When it settled, he reached into the cooler, grabbed himself a beer, and practically killed it in one gulp. He adjusted his cap and five minutes later reached for the cooler again. Again, he drank fast and slid the empty bottle across the deck towards Zipper. A minute later Don’s bobber disappeared.

“Set the hook, dude,” I blurted.  He jerked the pole straight up; the line went tight and then snapped.

“Win a few, lose a few,” Zipper chimed in.

“Get it back out there. They’re biting,” I added.

Don reached for the cooler, pulling three beers and handing one off in each direction. Zipper pulled in a little one and threw it back. Don hit one as I was watching an egret come into a landing in the dead trees that lined the shore on this side of the lake. I marveled at how it was able to adjust flight and bring its heavy bulk to balance on such a small branch.

Zipper had been there the day Mom died. He showed up with some burgers and a six-pack. We sat at the kitchen table. I sat in Dad’s old chair and Zipper took a seat at the other end where Mom always sat.

“So, what’s going to happen with this house?” he asked. “Are you going to keep it?”

“Not too sure,” I shrugged and reached for a burger.

Wendy had kept our house in the settlement. I didn’t fight it. No kids made things easy and she had the steady job. She handled the downpayment money, so it was no-brainer stuff. I had bounced around in odd jobs for too many years for all the wrong reasons. I don’t blame her for serving the papers. Mom encouraged me to move back home for a while.  She didn’t want me to live alone, and she didn’t want to be alone either.

 Zippy pulled a burger out of the bag and popped a beer for each of us.

“Why don’t you come up to the cabin this weekend and chill. The in-laws will be there. It’s Don’s birthday and it might be nice to be around family. We can go out and catch crappies. I guess they’re biting.”

*

The afternoon sun was beginning to dip; it was going to be a dandy sunset. Don handed around the last three beers as we rolled in our lines. I pulled up the anchor, and Zipper gave the motor a tug. Don pulled the half-full crappie basket over the side and dropped it on the deck.

“Not a bad day on the water,” I said. Zipper spun the boat around and we started for the dock.

Don tilted his cap back, took a sip, and sang, “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.”

Don was buzzed.

Zipper and I looked at each other and laughed hard like old high school buddies do.

---

In Which I Fell into a Well of Man-Eating Frogs
By Maryann Lawrence

I fell into a well of man-eating frogs but as I am a woman, they had no use for me. They crawled into my hair with their web-knuckled feet and sat upon my lap. I reached for my hat, out of which they had made a small boat that didn’t float, although their claim on it was fierce.

When I tried to explain I had no time for play, one jumped into my throat and thought he’d made a joke. Or maybe they were a she. How should I know a thing like that?

In any case, I was bruised and wet and stuck beyond self-help. You can imagine my state of dress in that foul-smelling pit, as I had been prepared for a wedding when my stroll was interrupted by a tumble over an unsecured stone. But the man-eating frogs did not care a whip. They complained my arms were far too thin and my skin a tad too pungent. My fingers, they said, had no meat at all and my legs were unappealing.

In short, I was not delicious, as I was made aware. Not fit for a frog is what they said. Not fit to gorge upon was the consensus of the man-eating army of amphibians.

So, it seems I had fallen in with the wrong crowd. I could not be ingested, digested, or even divested of my limbs. I took up too much room and they complained about this, too. They could not croak or swim. They told me in no uncertain terms what an imposition I was and yet made no attempt to rid me of their abode.

I noticed then they were thin and grumpy. As if they had been stuck in that well-pit for well-nigh a week or more. For frogs they seemed particularly inept at hopping, as none of them could reach the top of the well at all. What good, I asked, is living in a well if you cannot leave? I then learned the truth, which is that their present condition was the result of a botched crime; a collusion gone wrong, a conspiracy unconsummated; in short, an attempt in which they had all agreed to sit in wait at the bottom of a well in order to catch a man to eat.

But no man had ever fallen in with these frogs.

Leave it to a woman, they said, to ruin our plans. Now we are all doomed.

I tried to explain that, had a man been walking by and, had said man fallen into their well-trap, their plot would still not account for the subsequent necessary eventuality of escaping the well. They were stuck was my point.

Why not simply eat a man while he was on his daily walk? Or feeding pigeons in a park? Or whatever a man does who is not afraid of being accosted as he goes about his daily affairs? For that is most men, as you know. What man, you should ask, would be afraid of falling down a well? Does a man concern himself with unsecured stones? Does a man fear a walk about the park unaccompanied? Of course not!

And when a woman does walk alone and does fall—unintentionally—into a well of unprincipled creatures as she trips on the path to a wedding for which she is appropriately attired? Well, of course, it is her fault entirely. Why was she alone? they will ask. Why wasn’t she better prepared for a promenade over protruding pebbles?

Of course she should fall into a well of man-eating frogs! And when she falls into the company of lawless miscreants, what should she expect but to be molested and mistreated?

Well, that is just what I was told. And by no less than my savior, who said Now you go on your way and make sure not to fall down a well again. See, you are no better than these frogs, whom I will now rescue as well. Look better next time, as some brave personage such as I may not be so charitably inclined to redeem you.

Was it a man who recovered me? I will not tell you. But I can say this: when I was saved from that well, the frogs were saved, too.

In more ways than one.

---

ROASTED HAM WITH MASH AND PARSLEY SAUCE
By Per Olvmyr

Set the oven to 200ºC, leave the kitchen, open the balcony door and lean over the railing.

Remember to enjoy the view and try to resist any impulses throwing yourself off the balcony, falling helplessly towards the pavement.

When the ambulance comes, blame everything on the recipe. That one for roasted ham with mash and parsley sauce.

“I don’t believe in such recipes,” you say. “Where life is that simple and you just slice and slice parsley and put the ham in a tin foil.”

“You must think more positively when you get home,” they say, patting your back.

Now repeat the procedure. Same recipe. Same balcony. Same view.

Tell them about the recipe when they come to get you again.

“It’s not just mixing butter, milk, and spices and bringing it to a nice boil,” you say.

“All you have to do is cook the food,” they say. “Mix some parsley sauce and don’t run out and throw yourself off the balcony. Then everything will be fine.”

So you make another attempt. Same recipe. Set the oven to 200ºC and take a breath. Looking out the balcony.

Yet you find yourself thinking about it.

“Damn parsley!” you scream.

Before you lie there once again, trying to explain that everything depends on that recipe. The one with roasted ham, mash, and parsley sauce.

---

The Ramones
By Meg O’Connor

I got the second worst news of my life sitting across from the psychiatrist in the office with the obviously fake potted fern.

“You’re not crazy,” he said. Yeah, that’s the word he used, and even though I’d been bracing for this news, I gripped the sides of the chair.

“Sure I am. What else do you call it?” I let go, curled my hands into fists under the desk. Not fighting fists. Containment fists. Like I could trap in my hands the bits of me that slipped out before the psychiatrist could snatch them.

He raised an eyebrow. “Neurological. You’re in the wrong office.” He typed something into his computer like he’d already wiped his hands of the situation. His tie had lemons on it.

“But the Ramones coming out of the dryer? Who the hell hears the Ramones from the dryer?”

“People with hackneyed taste in music.” The psychiatrist typed something else, then looked back at my nonplussed face. He softened, conceding a real answer. “Do you know it’s not real?”

I hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Neurological.”

I shook my head at him as he reached for the mouse. “Like … dementia?” Jesus. I was thirty-seven.

He sighed. “Do you hear static over the music?”

I didn’t have to answer. He could see it on my face, that look of being caught in a broken Porta Potty with your dick out.

“Probably a seizure aura. I can put in a referral for you.” He paused. “Do you fall down and shake after you hear the Ramones?”

My mouth fell slightly open. What the fuck was this guy’s problem? “I don’t shake.”

As I eyed him, I ran through what I’d tell Anna. When I drive her to school in the morning, I try to keep the conversation steady because that’s what her mom used to do, and the grief counselor told me to keep everything I could the same. Habit is a tether, she said.

So I ask Anna about the teachers she loves and the boys she loves and the girls who think they’re better than her because they’re ‘legacy’ students. About once a month I make sure her grades are good enough to keep her scholarship. On Fridays, we count who can slip in the most quotes from the Big Lebowski.

Then I remembered about epilepsy and driver’s licenses. I pushed the chair away from the psychiatrist’s desk. “Don’t put in the referral. I got a guy. I’ll call him.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, but he handed over my visit summary. I glanced down at the diagnosis: “Auditory hallucinations.” Good. Nice and vague.

At home, I put the ribs in the oven. Anna doesn’t love ribs, but I do. I don’t love clam chowder, but she does. We have them back-to-back nights. She did her homework as I watched the game, until the Gregorian monks started chanting in the walls. I stood, wobbly on my feet. “Smoke break,” I said to Anna, and I headed out the back door after she rolled her eyes at me. She didn’t approve of my new smoking habit, but she also didn’t know it was fake.

I just about made it to the dog run, dark and surrounded by pines, soft from the needles blanketing the ground. I lay down, and Hugo came over to sniff me, pawed at me a few times. He lay down by my head. I guess he can smell it coming on. I felt the familiar sensation of the sky getting sucked into my skull, and then I went away.

I don’t know if I shake. All I know is there are bruises occasionally and a tongue laceration once. I’ve never pissed. I take that as a good sign. When I came to, I lay there, half myself, staring up at the stars peeking through the openings in the skinny pine branches. In two years, Anna would be able to drive herself to school. And until then, I had enough warning to pull the car over if things went sideways. She had friends at Canton, and a college counselor, and they called the cafeteria a ‘dining hall.’ I followed the dog run cable with my eyes. Habit is a tether. Tomorrow we’d quote the Big Lebowski, like we always did.

But our quote game was off the next morning. Anna had forgotten about her French conjugation worksheet and was cramming. Based on the swearing, I guess it was an irregular verb. I let her pick the music even though Friday was my Spotify playlist day. She put on Taylor Swift, like always. When she hit the subjunctive, she roared with frustration and grabbed her iPhone on the console to call her best friend for a last-minute hint.

“I can’t flunk another fiche, Maggie,” said Anna. “Please.”

My attention was split. One-third on driving, one-third on the word flunk, and one-third on the next song that came on Anna’s playlist. It was the song Marie and I had danced to at our wedding, except the words felt foreign, unreachable somehow. I didn’t know Anna knew, or cared. The music swelled in volume, and despite the wave of nostalgia, all I wanted was Anna to ace her worksheet.

“Je veux que tu sois ici?” she said into the phone. “I want that you will be here?”

“Honey, pause the music,” I said. “So you can hear.”

Her brow furrowed as she glanced sideways at me. “I did, Dad.”

My wedding song hit the chorus, crescendoed, a staticky echo. Then the sky came rushing in.

---

RENTAL
By Thomas Siefert

Bones had decided it would be comfortable to get our own place in town. She’d said to meet her at this address, at this time, don’t be late, and wear shoes.

For quite some time she’d been talking about getting out of the forest. At dinner, she would weigh the pros and cons of becoming a town person. Most nights, she’d find enough cons to stop talking about it. But a couple nights ago, we were having squirrel, and the pros won out.

It was almost time to leave the woods and go see that place. She said it was a condo. I knew what this kind of place looked like. It’s small and you can hear other people breathe through the walls. Bones would say the forest is also very noisy. She’d lie to herself. I know how the voices in the woods are much nicer than the condo people. The forest has a heartbeat, the condos can’t work together, they take you under ever-coming waves.

I cleaned myself in the river and trimmed my beard. The white shirt I keep in a trunk just in case I have to go into the world is not so white anymore, but it’ll do.

“Why do you want to leave the forest?” I asked her. It was a genuine question, wasn’t it? We had been living there for a while, near the very place we met. A band of kids was letting off some steam torturing a fox they’d caught in glue. The cries of the red thing were so damn loud they reached all over the county. I was down the valley, and Bones was up there, where the trees can’t grow taller. We ran. It was not so long ago even though it feels like ages. We were still wearing shoes and our arms were not these ape-y, muscular, limbs we developed later, but we got there fast.

It all went blank for a minute. The next thing I knew, the three kids were limping out of the woods and back to their mamas.

I didn’t want to leave. And it was not my decision to make. I had grown unacquainted with the townspeople, they wouldn’t let me in. In my being, they’d see what they struggle to put aside everyday under God’s sun. They don’t kill their own meat anymore. They don’t talk to the small things. They don’t follow the same time. How could they ever understand us?

The dust road that defined the town’s outskirts was bathing in hot light. I climbed out of the ditch and onto the road where my toes met with burning grit. I couldn’t find my shoes earlier and had to go anyway. “Bones won’t be so happy,” I thought, “but at least I’m here on time.”

Waiting for her was the hardest part. I couldn’t stand being so vulnerable. Anyone could see me, talk to me, arrest me even! There was no shade to hide, no creatures to look after, all there was to see was a barren strip of land. In front of me stood the apartment building. Not that high, I thought. Two stories, four units in total, and from the road I could have a glimpse of the backyard garden. There was plenty of shade back there. The picture of a hammock bloomed in mind. All in all, it was not so noisy out here. Very few cars drove that road and the town’s center was way down south.

Bones got here before the real estate agent. She was carrying a paper bag under her arm. She looked at my feet.

“I couldn’t find shoes,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought I had a pair somewhere, but no.”

Without a word she opened the bag and handed me a new pair.

“Look, she said, I know we were in heaven, we were angels in a green heaven, we were guardians of the river and all.”

I nodded.

“But things are different now. Do you understand ?”

I knew what she meant, I just didn’t want to agree with it. I didn’t want the idea to become a tangible aspect of our existence.

“It will be here in a few months, and I don’t think the woods will be heaven for such a small thing.”

It took me a while to notice my crying. Of course, she was right.

“It will be safe here,” she added before pulling my hand onto her belly.

At this moment, time changed. The forest clocks let me go, another time was waiting ahead.

She continued: “I know we were free, I know you know how it’s gon’ be now. But …”

“But we don’t matter that much now,” I said.

She let out a bright, short, laugh and held me close.

“We don’t matter that much, no.”

---

Second Chances
By Robin Kalota

I didn’t hear the knock on the door; didn’t see it crack open. I’m on my childhood bed cross-legged, eyes closed, Led Zeppelin circling on the turntable, a vinyl pizza riding through the bumps and pops, the needle like the blade of a sled skidding over uneven ground, static flying off the record like ice. I’m surrounded by the detritus of my teenage life; stuffed animals, a damn-doll with hair like a match-stick flame, Robert Plant staring down at me, Medusa-like hair flying above the mic, his picture propositioning me from faded blue walls. I lean over and turn the music dial up, level one, level two. I feel a disturbance in the air, a movement, and raise my voice an octave higher, singing along with Robert, the echo of my voice straining to keep up with the tempo.

 “Honey? Honey, it’s Mom.”

I hear her faintly, raise my voice. So does she. For a split second, we are twenty years back, competing for control. Facing off. My no to her yes. Her shouts to my silence. She should never have dared me to leave. You’ll see, she said. Was he the wrong man? I don’t know. How did she? He called me Baby. Baby, come with me. Baby, I’m all you need. And inevitably, Baby, I’m leaving.

“Honey, can I come in?” she asks, her foot already in the doorway, a burst of cool air pressing in as she moves a step closer.

The side of her face is resting on the edge of the door. She has her mother-face on, just as I remember, but older, softer, more jowly, etched with worry lines and laugh lines. The face I will become.

I beckon her in, the music flickering in the air between us. I’m home for a long overdue visit, sheepish and alone. Not sorry. Just searching for a path to move forward; a reset, a reminder of the girl, the fantasy, the spirit, and the spunk that was nurtured here.

“Want to talk?” she asks, her voice straining to be heard.

“What?”

“Can we chat?”

“Wait a minute,” I say, reaching over to turn the volume down, leaving it just loud enough, Robert’s voice hanging in the air, a low hum. As she bends to sit down next to me, my body prickles, and I fight the urge to pull away. The bed gives, dimples under her weight. She rests her cheek on my shoulder, and I feel the warmth of her breath. I hold mine. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, sitting side by side without the why did you, how could you dialogue that used to lead to angry shouts, tears or walking off.

“Hi Baby,” she coos, like a mother with a newborn child. Her arm cradles the top of my shoulders, and I lean back into the fullness of her chest, feel the power of her embrace. She smells of roses and gardenias and mac and cheese and Lysol and a life full of compromises and second chances.

I move to turn the volume back up just as Robert launches into the guitar solo, a high-pitched lament. Baby, Baby, Baby, he wails.

---

EVOLUTION OF STAYING
By Sky Davis

Mother keeps the thermostat at 62. This is a fact I notice only when my fingers go stiff while folding the sweaters, shoving them into the trolley I’ll take with me in three weeks.

“You don’t need all those books, do you?” she asks from the doorway, looking past me at the garage through my bedroom window. The nest is empty. Has been empty since December.

“I might,” I say.

“You won’t read them.”

“I might need them.”

The way we exchange words has changed since. Conditional tense, future perfect. Oftentimes, in B minor. Grammar holds optative moods that hold everything at arm’s length.

*

A wren built her nest in the hinge-space between garage door and frame in March, a year ago. We didn’t notice until the chicks were born. Four of them. So pink, and blind, mouths wide open. Waiting, always waiting.

My mother started parking in the driveway. Even when it meant walking in the rain, and (sometimes) getting the windshield covered in pollen.

“We can’t use the garage?” I asked.

“Not until they’re grown.”

This was irrational. My mother microwaves fish and never for once bothers to apologize for the smell. I bet, she doesn’t even notice my father opening all the windows every time she cooks fish. Last year she told me crying was a complete waste of time. And now she’s leaving the garage door open because the bird needs “space and air.”

*

I once read an article that stated that birds don’t have the neocortex development that grief requires for them to mourn. So when the wren loses her babies to winter she stops returning to that location and starts over where the math works better.

My mother has never started over. Perhaps, never had the thought to do something like that. Same house same marriage same thermostat (62) for twenty-two years. Her hair in the wedding photos is identical to her hair now which is identical to her hair probably forever. Also her breakfast.

When I mention this she says consistency is underrated.

(Underrated by whom I want to ask but don’t.)

*

What I remember about that spring:

My mother checking the nest before going to work. Looking, just looking. No touching. The wren would attack her anyway with all feathers, and mother would duck and laugh. Actually laugh. From a woman who thinks laughing is nothing but the complete loss of composure.

How she set up a motion-sensor camera only to track feeding times. Followed by narration of the footage to me over dinner. “Four times between noon and one. Mostly caterpillars. One spider.”

How I said, “That’s obsessive.” And she replied with a yes.

*

By June, four had thinned to two. We learned about natural selection in biology. The runts, being too weak to compete for food in the narrow space of the nest are either pushed out or starved out, evolution making no distinction between the two methods of dying.

The survivors fledged in early July, testing their wings against our garage door in a terrible repetition. Lifting falling lifting falling.

“They are going to be fine,” I told my mother who was watching them.

“I know, peach.”

Yet, she kept the garage door closed for another week anyway. Just in case they needed to return.

*

Winter intruded with an invited October frost and November ice. The two chicks, hatched in the late-September sun, were but a mistake of timing. The cold was a blade through the metal hinge-space.

My mother found them in the morning. She was in the garage when I heard her, not exactly crying but instead, making a sound. A keening of sorts.

“Mum?”

She was holding them. Both of them. Palms cupped into their nest.

“They’re so light,” she whimpered.

*

What most books don’t tell you about motherhood is that it’s mostly maintenance. That’s all there is to it. Checking, monitoring, checking (again), adjusting the environment by half-degrees in regular time intervals, parking in the driveway, setting the thermostat to 62 even though you’re cold (have always been) because your shivering is a deposit into your college fund.

But there’s cradling of loss every night. And evening, when the round ache swells and unfurls everything you once protected that has now left or died or worse, chose a different body to nest in.

While you keep checking the empty space and can’t make yourself stop reaching for what you wish was still there.

*

“The books are heavy,” my mother says now, watching me pack. “Your back.”

“I can manage.”

“You could leave some here. Come back for them during break.”

“I need them now.”

She nods wordlessly instead of arguing further. We both know I won’t come back for them. This is the first of my many strategic abandonments. The calculus of what fits in a sedan, what fits in a dorm room, and what in the life I’m about to begin building somewhere the math might work better.

*

Yesterday, I saw my mother sitting in my bed, stroking a stack of my folded kurta. Again and again, unaware of my presence in the doorway. When I cleared my throat, she got up quickly and made an excuse of checking if I needed my cupboard reorganized, then went back to her room. The light under her door stayed on until morning.

The wren hasn’t moved from her nest in days. Even when the garage floods slightly and water pools near the scooter. Perhaps, waiting. I think my mother is too. Hands in her lap, wings tucked. Winter took the bird’s children while she was out looking for food. August will take me while my mother is standing on the platform, waving and smiling at me. Neither knows how to leave. What comes after.

---

Dinner Rush
By Joli Huelskamp

The busser calls in sick. The runner calls in sick. Flavor Place is fully booked for dinner. In the kitchen, Caroline, the manager, makes a strong pot of coffee, gives us servers a quick pep talk, assigns stations.

Midway through the rush, Caroline seats a couple at table five, mine. A young suit and the girlfriend he’s trying to impress. He dawdles over the wine service, swishing the Cab around in his mouth for 20 seconds while I have entrées cooling on the pass.

In the kitchen, I pretend not to see dishwasher Ralphie, his head impossibly small, eating leftover calamari rings off an incoming plate.

Suit orders truffle arancini and the lamb chops with fennel cream sauce. Girlfriend orders golden beet salad and the ribeye, well done.

We’re behind, but not too bad. I carry dirties to the dish pit and see Ralphie scarfing pieces of fat from short rib bones. I see sweat roll down the back of Caroline’s neck as she buses tables, seats guests, handles complaints.

“I’d like a container for this.” Girlfriend has barely touched her ribeye, well done.

I bring the check and a foam box to the table. Girlfriend, appalled, looks past me. It’s Ralphie, carrying a dish tub, coming out to help. Suit shakes his head. “They shouldn’t let that freak out here,” he tells Girlfriend. Doesn’t bother to lower his voice.

Ralphie clears three dirty tables, Caroline following behind, wiping down. I process Suit’s check tableside; he’s a lousy tipper. I serve pan seared scallops and pork ragu to seven, clear the appetizer plates from eight, bring more bread to nine.

Suit and Girlfriend walk to the front. Suit looks around for someone to complain to, but Caroline is busy setting tables. They leave. I bring gnocchi with Camembert cream and the herb salmon filet to eight. Caroline is clearing five. Girlfriend forgot her foam box. I take it back to the dish pit, place it above the sink where Ralphie keeps his water bottle. “Ribeye,” I tell him, “well done.”

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