Nightingale & Sparrow

Category: Prose

  • Easy To Love

    Easy To Love

    Christi Krug

    First time I saw you, you were climbing the old cherry tree and your pink elf ears matched the blossoms. I was riding back of Gran’s sky-blue Skylark. We pulled up, I stepped out with my white quilted suitcase. You skittered down the tree, crossed the driveway, and thumped the chest of your collared shirt. “I’m Chippy Timmons!” You said it whistly, through missing teeth. Your shorts were grass-stained, and your tube socks slopped around your chubby ankles. Your face was doused with freckles. “Do you think we could play?”
    Gran’s neighborhood had no other children. Saturdays, you’d stand at the curb on the quiet, empty street and watch for the sky-blue Skylark. We’d meet between houses, where impatiens bloomed patiently. You’d smile so hard your chipmunk cheeks would nearly squeeze your eyes shut. “Christy. You’re here!”

    “Yep.”

    “We have this 3,000-piece puzzle. A 747 jet plane. You can come over and help on it.”

    “If you want.”

    The floor of your house was wood. Your toys were wood trucks, old-fashioned, with big wheels that didn’t make noise. The sun came in everywhere, and the house smelled like salad.
    You sat at the table, chin in hand, reached for a puzzle piece, and set it in an airplane window, snap. Your freckled fingers were gentle with everything, okay with everything, and you always smiled.

    I picked up a puzzle piece. The body was bunchy-armed, the nose pointy: a weird fish. I laid it on the airplane, tried it different ways.
    You placed another piece, snap, and another, snap.

    I tried my fish piece all around the white, blue, gray sky. I pushed it into bunchy-armed silhouettes. It resisted every time.
    Those were the years I had to move every few months, or stay with this relative or that. Mother was sick in a way that didn’t involve coughing or sneezing or headaches. My visits gave her a break.

    I never knew where I’d land.

    You were a boy, and younger. You didn’t care where I came from.

    “This doesn’t fit anywhere,” I told you. “Let’s play something else.”

    We never had an argument; we moved in sync. You outgrew your chubby ankles and most of your freckles but kept the pink elf ears and chipmunk cheeks. I stopped caring what you knew about my family or didn’t. Gran would say things—“Christy’s mother is nervous,” or “She has a condition.” It was all right. You wouldn’t change your mind about me.

    “Let’s climb the plum tree,” I said one Saturday.

    “Which one’s the plum tree?”

    “With the green and purple fruits. They look like butts.”

    You laughed.

    “Let’s spy on the neighbors,” I went on.

    “Okay.”

    It was easy to love you. You did everything I said.

    Over by the chain link fence, we slipped into leaf shadow, watching the Waverleys splash in their pool. Those rich, grown-up Waverleys. They had six hundred friends over, all with Dorothy Hamill haircuts. I would have done anything for a Dorothy Hamill haircut. “I hope Blaire Waverley belly flops,” I said.
    You nodded.

    “I hope her mascara runs,” I added. “I can’t believe her mother lets her wear makeup.” My mother was too nervous for makeup. Hers or mine.

    Blaire Waverly pulled her sleek body from the pool. She sauntered to the diving board in blue bikini, white bows at each hip.

    Straight brown hair fell in your eyes. “I could shoot my cap gun,” you said. “I could scare her.” You opened the silver barrel, checking the strip of red paper coiled inside.
    “Okay,” I said. You held your gun in the air. Blaire Waverly raised her arms. She bent her knees.

    The screen door squeaked.

    Blaire Waverly straightened and peered into the rhododendrons. Our chance was lost.

    Gran was standing on the porch, waving her Kodak. “How about a picture?” She seated you and me in red director’s chairs. She walked backwards, studying her viewfinder. We sat with arms dangling over the wood chair arms, unimpressed movie directors. The scene should always play our way.

    “Well, I have news,” Gran said one Saturday, driving over the Queen Anne Bridge in her sky-blue Skylark. “The Timmonses are moving. ”

    “Why?”

    “A bigger house. More kids in that neighborhood. That’s the way with a growing family.” She sighed. Our own family could do anything but grow. Mother was having episodes again. I felt the weight of Gran’s thoughts, wet blossoms sagging on the ground.

    “I’m sorry you didn’t get to play with Chippy,” she said, “one last time.”

    One year later, one late winter Saturday, Gran drove me to the state hospital, the psychiatric ward. I stared out at soggy fields, broken-down fences, slouching barns.
    We climbed concrete steps, sat on a tan vinyl couch, and watched people wander in and out of a fake living room. I figured it was fake because it wasn’t a room for living.
    Gran spoke to the desk person. A middle-aged woman held a baby doll. A tall, skinny guy toddled around with a smile that gave me the creeps.

    A black-haired man resembled the cop on Adam- 12. Except he was looking at the plants, saying, “The plants can’t survive without the water.” Then he laughed. Then he was quiet again. Then he said, loud to the plants: “The water feeds the plants!” like it was something he just figured out. A pause and then: “The plants have to have water,” and another small laugh.
    A young woman with thick eyeliner sat at a table, smoking and staring, a zombie from The Twilight Zone. There was an old man resting his head against the wall, eyes closed, drool trailing from his mouth. Any second, a heavy bead of drool would drop to his shirt.

    Then Mother came walking toward us, smiling. Gran was brisk with questions. “Do you like your doctors? Are you involved in activities?”

    Mother looked far away. She held my hand.

    Before we left, Mother pushed something across the table to Gran. It was a handcraft, a wooden apple she had made by gluing pieces of balsa wood. When we got home, Gran hung up her coat. She shut the apple in a drawer.

    I was getting used to shutting things away, and people too. It’s what a person had to do.

    I moved in with Gran full time. After winter break, I went to my new school, joining a class of fourth and fifth grades combined. Mrs. Lacey called roll. I glanced left. There in the front row: chipmunk cheeks, elf ears.

    You flushed when you heard my name. I threw my Dorothy Hamill hair over my face. I opened Prince Caspian and looked down, swallowing my horror.

    You’d been around my family; you knew things. What you didn’t know, you were smart enough to figure out. You could piece together any puzzle.
    Mrs. Lacey called out a Martin, then a Nguyen, then me, then a Petersen.

    I imagined you running up to me and wondering out loud in your honest-puppy way about my grandmother, my mother, my sick and nervous mother.

    The mother nobody in the world should know about.

    Mrs. Lacey got to the T’s. Timmons.

    Me, I didn’t know anyone with your name.

    You twisted your elf self around in your chair and scanned the room, and I looked down, away, inspecting my desk, getting up for a drink at the water fountain. So it went for days.
    Friday you ran up to my desk, unable to contain yourself any longer. You smiled, bunching your chipmunk cheeks. “Hey, Christy!” Your voice was soft and happy, ready as a puppy who just knows how good you’re going to love him.

    I turned a page in Prince Caspian.

    “Christy. It’s me, Chippy Timmons.” You put your small white palm on the corner of my desk.

    You watched me not watching you. Your voice dipped. “Don’t you . . .?”

    I forced my face paper-flat. I looked up. All the feelings that would make a face on me were wiped clean.

    I blinked at you. I couldn’t do harmony, gentleness. I didn’t know how to get along, or smile all the time, or keep a friend. I had too many secrets. “What do you want?”

    “Nevermind,” you whispered.

    You turned away, leaving a damp, shimmering handprint.

    I didn’t have a plum tree to climb, but I had to pretend to be far, far above you. It was all right, though. You knew what I was telling you to do.

    “I talked to Mrs. Timmons the other day,” Gran said. “She said you’re in Chippy’s class. But you don’t remember him. It breaks his heart that you don’t remember.”

    The next time Mrs. Lacey called my name, you stabbed your pencil hard and never looked back for me again.

    Christi Krug

  • Stuck in the Tape Deck

    Stuck in the Tape Deck

    Hannah Madonna

    The car ran fine, though the air conditioning was spotty, and the floor mats were gone. They spun the knob of the radio dial trying to find a station to listen to. Neither liked silence, and they’d both agreed they needed to spare their phone batteries, just in case. But they found more static than music, a thick, crackly blanket of sound almost worse than the quiet. There was a tape deck in the car, though, and their hands moved idly over the console, half-interested, and when they hit the eject button, a cassette tape popped out. It was hard, clear plastic with no label, and the shiny black ribbon was spooled all on one side. The day was hot, and the road stretched across the dusty landscape like a worn elastic band, loose and crumbling as it sagged over the gently rolling hills.
    Fingers with shiny black nails pushed the tape back in.
    It clicked into place and then a quiet, rolling static filled the car. A voice broke through. Rough and sad, a deep, aching loneliness —I’ve been searching for you, it sang. Searching for all that I’ve lost. No music played, only the voice, filled with a longing that sank like a dull knife deep, deep into their chests. Molly pressed the eject button before she could stop herself, but that voice was etched, permanent, into her, like the dolorous clang of a bell that would never be unrung.

    There had been too much silence. Before they left, it was nearly all silence —hands unclasped, words unspoken, the very breath and beat of their bodies dimmed and contained. After Jasmine shaved her head, she got a tattoo just behind her ear. Lines of thin, scrawly, looping black wound together to make the head of a sunflower. Molly traced the petals with the tip of a finger and held back laughter and asked, very quietly, if it tickled. Jas said yes and cupped her hand over the flowers, to keep the ghost of the touch from leaking away. Molly heard everything she meant, everything she couldn’t say —and they ran, together and never silent again.
    The car was silent, more oppressive than the heat, a choking cloud around them with no life or noise. As though it had been an accident in the first place, as though neither had wanted to stop the sounds of that voice, they pushed the tape back in together. It clicked on. That voice played again, heartbreaking and bare and raw. With no music behind it, the voice felt bottomless, a baritone reaching down for something always out of reach. Jas put her hand on Molly’s leg, on the soft bright skin above her knee. Molly clasped her hand and they listened as the tape played, intimate and painful, until the voice whispered to a halt and the sound rolled back into quiet static. Then they rewound the tape and listened again.

    The sweltering heat sizzled out as night fell, and the sky was black and cool when they pulled into a motel, dotted with stars that dripped pale light onto the world in strings of gauzy silver. They tripped over each other into the room, buoyed by the high of travel and the strange, demi-magic sound of the tape. They took turns showering, ate the protein bars they’d packed, and then lay together with the lights off, on the top of one of the twin beds. The other stood like a stranger in the room, its only personality the bright, geometric print of the bedspread, washed by the darkness into a slab of dull gray.
    Jasmine curled her fingers into Molly’s as they stared up at the ceiling, a crack of light from the half-closed curtain like an orange slice across the soft beige. One of them started to hum, or both of them, together maybe, their voices soft and fleeting and conjoined. It was the song from the tape, the haunting melody of that lost, lonely voice.
    I’m still searching, the voice had sung, its echo all around them. Molly moved closer, nuzzling into Jas’s shoulder, their hands in a knot between their bodies. The mass of Molly’s curls sat soft in a pillow around them as they sang about searching—and thought not about what they had lost, but all that they had found.

    Hannah Madonna

  • A Midwinter Night’s Dream

    A Midwinter Night’s Dream

    Fija Callaghan

    The celebrations were over. The wan winter sun had long since fallen and the wood rested in the deep, dreamless sleep of the year’s darkest night. Oberon pulled off his holly mask and laid it at his sleeping wife’s feet. 

    “Sweetly met by moonlight, fair Titania.” He touched the side of her pale face, cold as river water. He loved her, even still—it was easier to remember when she was asleep. Her dark eyelashes were edged in frost and he allowed himself a brief, forbidden moment of vulnerability. Then soft footsteps padded behind him and the moment was lost. 

     “Are you ready, my king?” Robin Goodfellow, wrapped in white fox fur, was a smudge against the winter landscape. “The Hunter is coming.”

    Oberon disliked the Hunt. There was no order, no elegance. Only the wild winter wind stripping them raw of all pageant and pretension, tearing off their glamours and discarding them like falling stars. The distant howling of hounds preceded, just barely, the whisper of fresh snowflakes. Then the hunters came.

    Herne, savage god of the wild places, led in his chariot of frost and thorns. Robin left his fox fur lying on the ground as he leapt up to meet them. Sighing, Oberon caught hold  of a screeching wind and took to the back of a hound. Its fur was slick and oily and cold to the touch. The Wild Hunt careened across the sky and Oberon felt his carefully constructed facade slip away; here, in this fraternity of primordial elements, he was once again nothing but a man called True Thomas who had followed a faerie queen into elfland. 

    The land beneath them shifted from dense, snow-laden pines into patches of barren farmland, which in turn collapsed into the slickly-paved streets of the city. Windows winked at them and automobiles slipped in and out of crossroads. Oberon wondered if his Titania knew how different the world had become. There was a time when men out after dark on Midwinters had to mind their eyes didn’t stray skyward, lest they be taken to join the Wild Hunt’s parade. Now men had no time for the skies, no time for the old stories, and their eyes rarely left the slim little pocketbooks they all carried about. 

    They flew low over a fountain in a grand city square. The water was frozen mid-cascade and icicles hung from its crest. Two stone lions stood on either side; one of them looked up and nodded respectfully at the Hunt as it passed.

     Oberon wasn’t quite sure what happened next. He looked to Robin Goodfellow and found that he was no longer at his side. The hound threw back its head in a mournful howl, and Oberon’s grip came loose, and then—

    Then he was falling very very quickly.

    Falling hurt. No— landing hurt. Oberon experienced pain so rarely, and it had been so long, that at first he didn’t recognize it for what it was. He merely identified a general feeling of unpleasantness that intensified as he tried to get to his feet. 

    He was at the fountain’s edge. The lion lay beside it, silent and resolute. He didn’t know how far the Hunt had taken him from his home, or which direction he should take to find his way back. The square was empty and the snow was falling in heavy clumps.

    Not completely empty. A bundle of rags shifted, then pulled itself upright into something resembling a man. It smelled like liquor and human waste and forgotten things.

    “Alright, mate?” it said.

     Oberon could be many things, if he chose, but he would never be rude. “I am well. Your concern is welcome. I will be better once I find my way home.”

    “Tha’s for certain. The radio said it’s gonna be cold as anything tonight. Get safe inside if you’ve a home to be inside of.”

    “Yes…” Oberon scanned the unfamiliar landscape. “Where is the nearest woodland?”

    The man shrugged, a great rumble of jackets and scarves. “There’s a park a few blocks down there, but they lock it up at night and the benches have those divider things on ‘em. Tha’s the only wood I know of. What’s your name, anyway?”

    Oberon— he began to say, but that felt wrong in this place, this form. His lost name hadn’t been in his mouth for so long that its shape was all but forgotten. He held it carefully, uncertainly, like something both precious and venomous.

    “Thomas. Thomas Rhymer.”

    “Ah yeah? I knew a Thomas once, back in school. Awful bugger. Used to put glue on the soles of my trainers. I’m Jerry.” He held out his hand.

    Oberon stared down at it. Surely this mortal man couldn’t understand the sacred covenant he was offering. However, to refuse the being who had become his host in this place would be the height of poor hospitality. With a sinking feeling in his chest, Oberon gave his hand in return.

    Two hands joined over an exchange of names. The most powerful magic was often the simplest. The man dropped his hand, satisfied. “Right, you’d best be off while you can then. Hope there’s a good woman and a fire waiting for you. You don’ exactly look dressed for the weather, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

    Oberon nodded, indifferent. “The cold does not bother me as it once did.”

     “Ah well, there’s a lot to be said for something to come home to. What’s she like, your lady?”

    He felt a flicker of annoyance for this street waste who had so easily beholden him, but it was lost under the torrent of thoughts and feelings. How could he describe Titania? How could anyone? “She is ice and thorns and apple blossoms. She is a fire that burns through the darkest nights of Midwinter. Her heart is full of passion and her mind is a labyrinth of blades. I would die a thousand times for her.”

    The man in rags nodded sagely. “I’ve known a few like tha’. Love is a tricky thing.” 

    The snow was falling faster now, painting the square anew as an empty canvas. The slick facets of the frozen fountain burrowed under the fresh snowfall. A hungry winter wind raised its head.

    Oberon turned to the man. “And you? Where is your home?”

    He spread his hands and gestured to the square. “My home is where my feet take me. Wherever I can catch a few moments rest, or a kind word. Home isn’ something that exists only within four walls.”

    “Yes,” he agreed, “I understand.” 

    A crash came from behind them and Oberon whipped his head around. A piece of the frozen cascade had come loose and shattered on the ground below. Bits of ice littered the ground like diamonds. 

    Oberon shifted impatiently. “Have you no woman, no fire?”

    “Not for a long time.” The man sat down again and watched the snow collect on his boots. “I had one of the good ones. The good one, the kind they used to write fairy tales about. I know you’re gonna laugh, but it’s the truth. We were supposed to be forever.

    “Anyway, I lost my job a ways back—about a hundred o’ us did—and I lost my way for a while. I started blaming her. One day I came home and she was gone.”

    Oberon considered the man, already knee-deep in snowfall. “And you live here now? In this place?” There was, he was certain, something not quite right about this.     

    The man turned his face skywards. Snow clung to his eyebrows. He looked like a drawing that was slowly being smudged out.

    “It’s beautiful, isn’ it?”

    That winter wind howled.

    “The cold.” Oberon seized on it at last. “It will hurt you.”

    Even he, king of the summer court beyond the hills, could not take this cold forever. He was beginning to feel it whispering deep in his bones, songs of sleep and darkness. Already he had delayed too long in this place. He searched for the stars to guide him home but they, along with the city around him, were fading into nothingness. 

    “It’s okay,” the man said. “I’ve no one to leave behind. All o’ my dreams were abandoned a long time ago. This isn’ such a bad way to leave the stage.” He pulled his coat tighter around him. “The snow is awfully pretty.” 

    Oberon stared down at him. Even under all the layers of hair and clothes, the man looked very small. His face had a bluish colour to it one didn’t usually see on mortal men. Oberon knelt down next to him. 

    “Jerry.” The word felt heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue. “Look around you. This is madness. The very world is disappearing.”

    Jerry closed his eyes, and Oberon fought the ridiculous urge to pull them back open with his own hands—hands which were beginning to feel the bite of the cold as well. 

    “Thomas,” the man murmured sleepily. “My mum used to tell me stories about a Thomas. Went all the way to fairy land, he did.”

    Trust Oberon of the Faeries to bind himself to another madman, he thought. This is worse than that slovenly playwright. What should it matter to him if this forgotten mortal died alone, on the wayside of human consciousness? He had more important things to worry about, like making his way home to his Titania and reclaiming the shape the Wild Hunt had taken. And yet, the panic in Oberon’s chest rose higher as he watched the man slip away into dreaming. 

    “Return with me. My family will give you shelter until the storm passes.” He could feel the man’s shoulders stiffening beneath his grip. “You stupid humans live and die like fireflies. Your light will not go out today.” Oberon wondered if he was becoming hysterical. 

    The man did not respond. 

    The King of Faeries looked around for help. The square was silent, and the buildings around it were softening into the background like a faraway dream. Only the frozen fountain and the stone lions guarding it kept a semblance of their shape. Oberon stood and brushed the snow off the lion nearest him. It gazed back with empty eyes. 

    “You.” Oberon pointed regally. “Wild guardian of this mortal temple. You who offer sanctuary to the lost people of this city. Your king requires your aid.”

    The snow was already reobscuring the lion’s face. Oberon pushed it away impatiently. 

    “Lord of the jungle of smoke and glass. My host and I must travel back to the woodland. On your feet, I command you.”

    There was no answer. Oberon looked back at Jerry. The man’s eyes were still closed. He could have been sleeping. 

    He knelt down at his side and gently put his fingers to his throat. A pulse flickered, soft as a mouse’s footsteps. Slow. So slow.

    He stood again, kicking up clouds of whirling snowflakes. He looked the lion in the eyes.

    “Please. Please help him.”

    It had been a lifetime since he’d used that word. It scraped his teeth as it came out. For a single heartbeat he thought he saw movement in the lion’s mane, like a play of sunlight on the ice and stone. Oberon held his breath.

    Then nothing. 

    He was afraid to let the breath out, afraid that in doing so he would allow the moment to pass. But the snow continued to fall, and the lion’s eyes disappeared with the rest of the world. 

    Oberon stared at the audacious beast. Everything seemed to be mocking him, the great king unmasked. 

    “We exchanged names!”

    Caught in the empty nowhereland between one midwinter dream and another, Oberon watched the landscape fade away.

     

    ***

     

    It was Robin Goodfellow who found him, in the strained, straggling twilight that came before sunrise. The snow had taken everything before leaving the world in crystalline stillness. Oberon sat at the fountain’s base, a frozen man in his arms. 

    “Well met, my lord Oberon.” Robin was wearing his fox furs again, but his cheerful face was bright. “We lost you during the night’s hunt. The Lady will be grateful to see you return unharmed.”

    Oberon’s limbs were stiff. The approaching dawn had brought back the face he’d worn for centuries, as natural as if he’d never had another. He shifted the man from his arms and laid him down in the snow. 

    “Go softly, friend. May you find peace.”

    He stood, brushing off slivers of ice and the last dregs of humanity, and took the smaller faerie’s hand.

    “Let’s go home.”

    Fija Callaghan

  • Vulpes lagopus

    Vulpes lagopus

    Matthew Pinkney

    I hate being woken up from a dream. I always catch it right in the middle of something. It’s like changing the channel to a movie two-thirds of the way through. Everything happening seems important, but I can’t figure out what any of it means. And then, as quickly as it all comes to me, it slips from my grasp.

    —

    In my dream, I am an Arctic fox, small and thickly suited in white fur. I pad forward on pack ice through a blinding snowstorm — a whiteout, some would call it, while advising you to stay inside and warm up with hot chocolate.

    But not me. I keep going, putting one paw in front of the other, bracing against the wind and ice. I see nothing ahead of me, but I feel everything. The cold twists its icy fingers beneath my fur, threatening to freeze me solid. Wind beats at my face. Chunks of ice tear at the soft skin on my paws. I grip harder onto the pack ice, feeling the slow, ominous roll of waves beneath my feet. I grit my fangs, flatten my ears, and take step after step after step, knowing I must take shelter, hoping something will be on the other side.

    The ice shifts beneath my feet, rising up suddenly, and I am awake.

    —

    I woke back into my body, still in the clutches of the cold. Suddenly furless, I reached out for the closest source of warmth I could think of, but there was nothing there; just a warm spot on the sheets and a lingering masculine scent on the pillow.

    The disconnect between expectation and reality was enough to pull my brain fully into the land of the waking. I opened my eyes and ran my hands over the other half of the bed while they adjusted to the darkness. He wasn’t there.

    Frightful was a good word to describe the weather outside. Wind rushed through pine trees and snow beat against the walls of the cabin. The only light to see by came from the LEDs throughout the house. The moon and stars were hidden by storm clouds.

    I wrapped a blanket around my naked body and trudged into the other room.

    He was sitting at the kitchen table in his boxers, framed against a wide window, watching the snow fall. A cup of tea sat next to him, thin wisps of steam rising into the cold air. 

    I sat behind him and wrapped my arms around him, trying to gain what little bits of warmth I could.

    “Hey,” I whispered, almost afraid to break his silent reverie.

    “Did I wake you up?” he asked, just as quietly.

    “A little.”

    There was a moment of silence. Then, “Sorry.”

    We stayed like that for another moment, him looking at the snow, me hugging him from behind.

    I planted a kiss on his neck and murmured into his skin, “Come back to bed.”

    “In a minute,” he said.

    I wanted to argue, but instead, I just leaned against him and rubbed a small patch of his forearm with my thumb.

    “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

    “Thinking,” he said, after a pause.

    “Is it about what I said?”

    “Do we have to do this right now?” he asked.

    “That’s a yes.”

    “No, it –” he sighed. “Okay, yeah. I was.”

    I knew when I asked him if he wanted something more that it was a risk. Right now, we were just… friends wasn’t the right word for it, but trying to find a better one was like trying to catch a snowflake in a blizzard. “Friends with benefits” was closer, but left a poor taste in my mouth. I wanted things to be like this beyond the two weeks we trekked into the wilderness and played pretend at love. I wanted something more than this kindergarten domesticity.

    When we finally went back to bed, I found myself staying awake, listening to the snow fall and playing with the hair on his chest, long after his breath evened out into the steady rise and fall of sleep. 

    I kissed him one last time and felt something inside me break.

    —

    The Arctic fox is carnivorous, but has been recorded eating everything: seal pups, bird eggs, berries, seaweed — anything it can to survive.

    I feel the same as I run back from the airport, take two subway trains, walk three blocks, and climb four flights of stairs to reach my empty apartment in the heart of a snow-locked city. I leave my bags on the bed, run a bath as hot as it can get, and write out a text.

    Just got home safe. Love you. Purple heart, because red is still too hot for us.

    I hit send and off goes another bit of sunshine from my cold life to warm him. I sit down in the tub, but it is lukewarm before long.

    Matthew Pinkney

  • Weathering the Storm

    Weathering the Storm

    Kristina Saccone

    Mom was nothing but a messy bun of unwashed hair and the back of a head. It was better that way, since Didi couldn’t stand seeing the rawness in her face, a mix of fear and sadness since Grandad died. A nor’easter had hit the night before, but Mom needed to make it to the funeral in Tampa that afternoon, so Didi would be taking her to the airport.  

    “There are four hours till the flight,” Mom said. “We can make it to Logan in the storm.” Now a sideways stream of snow and sleet blinded the roadway. Didi slid a few millimeters forward in the driver’s seat, as if getting closer to the windshield could make the whiteout come into focus. 

    Before picking up Mom, Didi had rolled out of her dorm room at 9 am to meet Kendra at the dining hall. Was a brunch date three weekends in a row the start of something real? They were still new enough to worry that a long-term relationship might not be in the cards, but old enough to recognize when two people clicked. 

    “How well did you know your grandad?” Kendra asked, pouring fake maple syrup on her plate. 

    “We lived far away,” Didi shrugged. “When we saw him, he and my mom always fought.” 

    Kendra picked at her waffle. “I’m glad you can help her now.” 

    At least half an inch of snow had piled on the bench outside the dining hall since they’d walked in. “I hope we make it there on time,” Didi sighed. Shortly after, she tossed a cinnamon raisin muffin in her bag and left to dig out her car. She piled on a mix of hand-knit layers and LL Bean for warmth, armor for the road. Her 1996 Honda Civic took forever to warm up, especially in weather like this.  

    Now on the highway, not far from her mom’s house, it no longer resembled a run-of-the-mill snowstorm. Ice crystals spread across the windshield in a matrix of fractals. The wipers slid across the windshield to little effect; they beat to a rhythm of an unsettling rasp, rubber on ice, rubber on ice. The car moved at about 10 miles per hour. 

    Mom turned to look at her with fire-rimmed eyes. “Can’t you go just a little faster?”

    “Mom, I’ll try,” Didi said. “But look at this storm.”

    “I want to get to the airport a little early and find a travel pillow. I can’t do this family thing without a nap on the flight,” Mom said.

    Didi thought her mom looked like she hadn’t slept since getting the news. “Why don’t you nod off in the car?” she suggested. 

    Mom took a long sip of her coffee and shook her head. 

    “Remember how Grandad used to pick at me for marrying your dad? He loved being right when your dad left,” she sneered. Didi remembered it as her grandfather’s wry sense of humor, cracking jokes to make light of the difficult divorce. Didi had been grateful. 

    Mom pulled the top off her mug, and the acrid smell of Maxwell House floated through the cold car. 

    “There was never an ‘I’m so sorry’, or even a hug when we saw each other next.”

    Didi hated these stories. Ten years later, everyone seemed to have moved on but her mom. 

    The blizzard cocooned the car like a cloud of darting bees, droning with the wind. She pressed the gas pedal just a bit more, willing the storm to calm so they could make it to the airport sooner. The back wheels reacted by fishtailing in the ice and slush. 

    “Jesus, Didi!” Mom yelped.  Easing her foot off, Didi steadied the car with the wheel.  “I bet you wish you’d gone to school in Florida,” Mom twittered, calmed by the road being righted again. She put her hand on Didi’s leg. “Oh you are warm! I could use some of that.” Mom forgot to wear a coat that morning, and the Civic’s heater was still struggling. 

    In this frozen New Hampshire tumble, the University of Tampa sounded so foreign. Didi had wanted to leave the state for school, but couldn’t afford tuition. 

    “I’m so blessed to have you close by, Dee,” Mom said, looking out the window again.  

    That morning, Didi told Kendra, “My mom says it’s a blessing that grandad passed quickly after his cancer diagnosis. I’m not so sure.” 

    Kendra didn’t look away. “Hmm. Why?”  

    “I would have liked to hear his stories. Like how my mom was before she met my dad,” Didi said. She’d seen pictures, her mom holding Grandad’s hand and looking at the camera with a smile Didi didn’t recognize. 

    “Dammit,” said Mom, in the car. “I forgot to eat this morning.” 

    “I have a muffin,” Didi said, rooting around in her bag behind the passenger seat. With just one eye on the obscured road, she saw a flash of red tail lights and tapped the brakes. The Civic slid like waxed skis on its own momentum. Propelled by the composite of fresh powder over a crushed slick of ice, they careened into a railing. 

    Mom’s open coffee sploshed on her lap. “Shit, shit, shit,” wiping at it with the sleeve of her shirt a few times. Then, she broke into tears.

    Didi laid her head on the steering wheel, its coolness pressed into her forehead. It reminded her of Kendra’s fingers touching the back of her neck when they hugged goodbye that morning. 

    “Be gentle with your Mom,” she’d whispered, brushing her lips on Didi’s. “We all grieve in our own way.”

    Kristina Saccone

  • Night Walks – Part II

    Night Walks – Part II

    Penny Pennell

    Once she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a picture frame sliding down drywall. Discombobulated in shadows that once loomed familiar, she slipped out from his side, where he continued to sleep soundly, and made her way down the hall. Seeing the fractured frame and shards of glass, she contemplated ghosts and gravity. Barefoot, she fetched the broom and dust pan.

    Eyelids heavy, she felt stuck in a dream, listening to the scrape and clatter of glass on tile, waiting to hear footsteps behind her. When a piece of glass slid through her skin, it took moments and a deep yawn before she felt it. Before she saw the droplet of blood fall. 

    She sucked the blood from her thumb. At the sink, she let cold water run over it and then wrapped it tightly in a paper towel. 

    Outside she could hear the rattle and scrape of a snow plow. Yellow lights pulsed from the other side of the curtains. She peered out from the side to see a blanket of white and whirl of snow still falling. From the hall closet, she grabbed her husband’s overcoat, slipped on her boots, and coiled a scarf around her neck.

    The cold air made her gasp, made her think of pop songs and snow days, cocoa and burning the tip of her tongue. A shudder and then the memory of making crafts with her mother, watching her use the iron to melt shards of crayon between waxed pages. A kaleidoscope of color and the pungency of wax and no memory of what she was thinking about at six. 

    She heard the snow pack under the first step off the porch; inhaled a long breath and felt the first flakes surrender to the heat of her skin. Soon her breath found the rhythm of the wind circling her. Her spine was rigid, the cold air encircling her bare legs under the long coat, coaxing her back inside. But she walked on. 

    She walked the length of the driveway to where she thought the sidewalk should be. She thought about where she should be. Who she should be. Why she longed to be lost in the hush of snowfall.

    The wind lulled, gathering its might, and for a moment she could hear the hum of streetlamps. When she wrapped the coat that smelled of him, of sandalwood, tightly around her frame, she felt a clump of snow slide down her spine. She kept walking. 

    The houses were quiet. No lights. No traffic. No moon to lure her away. Snow too deep to run through. The fire of cold numbing her toes, her skin. Yet, she kept breathing with the wind. In and out. In and out.

    On the wind she thought she heard her name. She glanced behind to see him standing on the porch, incredulous at the thought of needing to call her in from outside. She threw her arms up and twirled under the snowfall. He laughed. She smiled at him and started back. 

    She wondered what she would remember from the last night sleeping at his side; whether it would be the sound of breaking glass splintering into corners and crevices, or the wind.

    Penny Pennell

  • Snowsquall

    Snowsquall

    Jasmine Kuzner

    When you’re used to life in sunshine, you’ll believe it when someone says the cold will kill you. Especially if you’re five years old and you’re being boxed up, shipped, and delivered cross country from a shore to a frozen swamp. It can become a sort of creed: 

      Cold will get into your lungs, freeze your organs. 

      That’s why they wear scarves. 

      Cold will Jell-o your blood. It’ll grow thick and viscous, 

      too slow to fill your fingertips. 

      Fingers will get frostbite. Worst case, they can amputate. 

      That’s why they wear gloves. 

    You’ll believe it because you’re five but you’ll believe it mostly because you have never felt what people say cold can be. You’ve caught them talking about it sometimes. Like drops from that leaky faucet, or dust you spy in beams of sunlight, swipe at, and try to catch. Dead Cold is what your mom said to your aunt one time. She was on the phone with her and you heard her say the words: Ashtray. Kumquat. Dead Cold. Mom was lasso’d up in the curly phone cord leaning up against the wall, phone stuck between shoulder and cheek. She saw you, frozen in a slit of space. You were wedged in the middle of the swinging kitchen gate, and when she noticed you she stopped talking in English. She switched to that jingly language she knew and whispered. She never taught you to jangle like that and you were sore about it. You promised yourself that when you grew up, you’d marry a man who could speak in a cling-clang language too, so that you and he could ring secrets around anyone who didn’t understand, all day long. (You hadn’t learned that truth yet, that husbands and wives don’t need another language to do that.) For a brief second when you heard your mom say Dead Cold, you worried that your aunt was really dead. But your mom kept ringing into that phone. You could see your aunt, alive and well, her cigarette smoke catching the reverberation on the other end. 

    Cold can move like a bell sound. You learned that in “The No Name Storm” of ‘93. That was a Real-True blizzard. Everybody said so at least, in the days before it made landfall. This is what you understood: It was going to start in the Gulf of Mexico. A strong wind was going to swirl around the top of the Gulf and suck up all the water, like it had jaws. It would grow like a monster, devour all the marshes and wetlands on the Mid-Atlantic, and by the time it sucked up all the swamps in Maryland it would be full and fat. And that would make it Piss-Drunk. Or so said your new, old man neighbor. 

    “Day uh two, that storm’s gonna stop suckin’ up all that moisture. Gonna be so Piss-Drunk it’s not gonna know what to do but sit around in the sky like so, tryin’ not to piss.” He was right. “The No Name Storm” would hover over the town you lived in, belly full, trying not to piss. The whole city would prepare and wait. You spent days timing yourself, seeing how long it would take to crawl in cabinets and get in and out from under tables. You were frightened but also excited because your new, old man neighbor said that when it came, it would come like a dragon. A crazy, mixed-up dragon. The dragon would be so full, he said, that it wouldn’t notice that all the marshes and wetlands it ate have put out the fires in its stomach. It would grow bothered and uncomfortable when, being so cold, the water would freeze into a gigantic, frigid block. When the dragon tried to spit, instead of fire, ice would break from its belly and in one furious breath, the ice would ram and splinter through a thousand dragon teeth. It would fall out in pounds of snow. It would burn and bury your town in a billion frozen flakes. 

    You had to wait for days before your mom said it was safe enough for you to go outside. When it came time, she readied your face with Vaseline and double layered your socks, but since she was a person who came from sunshine too, she didn’t really ever know how to ready you for this kind of cold. It was so cold, it screamed. It pierced your eardrums, blitzed your brain. It took minutes for you to come around, to remember what you came outside to do. You lifted your knee to your chest, took a step, but your foot sunk inches and disappeared in the mound that seemed to keep growing before you. You did the same with your other foot and then were completely incarcerated. Wind was the only movement. It blew refrains of white and iciness, and you yielded against it, striking the space behind you, your small body barely making a sound. Later, when you’d been inside drinking hot chocolate made with water, the cold still rang in your ears. You would hear it for years to follow, every time it snowed. 

    Your Dead Cold aunt was the best person to go to for things like ear aches and tummy problems. She, like all your other aunts, was a nurse. She, like all your other aunts, traveled the world and was a nurse to all sorts of people. You had uncles through these aunts, but they were often not the same year after year, so you technically had a thousand of them. Your mom was the only rebel. She married your dad and became an accountant. 

    “Whatsa-ya-matter?” your aunt would say when you hopped onto her bed with your ailment, ready with your own box of band-aids. 

    She’d been a nurse in Italy and you figured that’s why she sometimes added a “-sa” to any of her words, but especially to her whats and wheres and whos. Like she’d missed Italy so much and could transport herself, if only momentarily, to be in Italy. Talking to people she knew, in Italy. That’s where she learned to make spaghetti sauce with chopped up onions, carrots, and celery. Sometimes, she’d let you help when your mom wasn’t looking so you could be the one to chop-sa into bits. Your mom had laughed at her when she saw her cooking it that way once, and your aunt shot back that your mom wouldn’t know anything about Italy and that she should close her mouth. 

    You thought you never saw any spaghetti like that, even at Shakey’s, but unlike your mom, you just kept your mouth closed when she asked you what you thought. Later that night, your aunt could tell what you and your mom thought, when you ate it. You remember her, leaned back in her chair, one arm crossed upon her chest and blowing a long, slow, smoke ring. She smirked while she watched you and your mom wolf down the odd spaghetti. It was one of the only nights your mom let her smoke inside the house. Other nights, your aunt would be forced out to the lanai when she needed a smoke. You joined her sometimes, only after you found something suitable to pop in your mouth so you could pretend to look just like her. You thought she looked just like the lady in I Dream of Jeannie, but your aunt’s hair was jet black. Her eyes smoldered instead of shined. 

    Your aunt was the one who told you to drink warm things when you were hot to feel cooler, and to drink cool things when you felt cold to feel warm. Of all the things you knew about her, it was this claim that made you think she was either the smartest woman on the planet, or the craziest. Frostbite–what it is and how to treat it–made you think the former. She was the one who taught you about it, right before you moved to the land of the frozen swamps.

    “Prolonged exposure to extreme cold,” she read to you out of a first aid book once, “may give the affected area a sensation of burning. Treat by warming the affected area slowly in tepid, not warm, water.” 

     Blood, you guessed, when frozen was just like ice. You knew because you held an ice cube under hot water once. It cracked like glass and came apart in crystals in your hand. You held another ice cube under tepid water and it just leaked. Drop by drop, it melted until you were holding an empty hand under running water. You thought that it was maybe why cold-blooded animals like frogs don’t try to escape their death if they are caught in slow boiling pots of water. Drop by drop, their cold blood boils until all of a sudden, all they’re doing is sitting there, cooked. It was something a man you called Uncle Charlie liked to say a lot.

    “If you find a frog in a pot of water, heat it up slowly. Won’t dare jump out until it’s too late.”

    Uncle Charlie never talked about why one would casually find a frog just sitting, waiting in a pot of water. You just remember him saying it, laughing every time like it was the first time he’d ever said it. 

    “Makes a good soup!” He was the type to always spit a little when he laughed. 

    Uncle Charlie also always smelled like some kind of boiled soup, and everything he wore seemed to be stained with it. The fact that your aunt hung around a man like Uncle Charlie for years made you think that she was more crazy, after all, than smart. Uncle Charlie was the man your aunt was dating when she and your mom had that phone call. You never saw Uncle Charlie much after that conversation, and when you were older it was fun to try to piece together what happened between him and her using the only words you knew: 

      She threw an ashtray at his head. That was dead cold. Or, 

      He caught her, dead cold, with another uncle, smoking. Not, 

      the kind you need an ashtray for. 

      She went to look for her ashtray and she saw him and her. 

      She left. She didn’t cry. She walked away. Dead Cold. 

    No matter how many times you played those words from that phone call, you never quite knew what to do with the kumquats. When it came to the kumquats, this is the only thing you knew: when you were five and living in sunshine, they were sweet. Sticky and soft, you liked to peel them. You liked the feel of them when you plucked them off the little tree that grew in a pot between shadows in the parlor of grandma’s San Diego rancher. When you moved to the frozen swamp, you were told that they don’t have kumquats on this side of the country because it was too cold to grow them. Imagine then, what your squeal sounded like when you found them, hiding at the bottom of a bin at a Magruders, a tiny bunch of gold, trussed to a dried-up branch. They were flanked by loose pinecones and ornamental pumpkins, like the people who worked there didn’t know they were treasures to be eaten. You grabbed them. You shielded them with your coat, threw them on the counter just as your mom was paying for tea. Outside and free, you plunged the branch into a snowbank you walked by to wash it, and before your mom could buckle your seatbelt you ripped off the skin, shoved it in your mouth. You cried. It burned your tongue, it was so sour. You gagged and got in trouble for spewing kumquat and snow all over the backseat. You learned then, a truth that still stings to this day: there’s not much that’s more bitter than kumquats and snow. 

    Bitterness moves like a glacier. A solid that flows like a liquid, glaciers can move without melting. Deformed and stressed by pressure, glaciers move just before melting point, like a fired piece of metal right before it promises to be malleable. And if there was anything you were coming to know about snow, it’s that melting points are always found right before a promise. 

    You remember the very first time you heard it was coming for you, snow. Real snow, not like the kind they spray from a machine when you live in a land of sunshine. Your mom was listening to WTOP and heard about it “every 10 minutes on the 8’s.” You and she had been in the house you were to rent for a year, and she pushed through boxes and papers to yell it at you, and before you could react, she was on it. Layers upon layers of shirts were shoved on you, both short and long sleeves. She hadn’t had a chance yet to go shopping for winter clothes, so swim shorts were squeezed over your head and covered with a scarf to make a hat. Socks were made into easy mittens. A vinyl tablecloth was twisted and tucked into a coat. It smothered the final arrangement of clothing molded on you and any hopes you had of moving your arms. Around 5pm, the light from the sunset grew dim as it usually does in December in Maryland, and the snow was predicted to start. She pushed you right out on the deck because she had never lived anywhere to know that snow doesn’t come when weathermen say it will. You waited, hot underneath your vinyl tablecloth. 

    You searched the sky above, looked deep between dusk and dark, and then, only when the sun was completely unlit, you saw it. You thought it was a star at first but when it was falling towards you, you knew. Wide and disc-shaped, snow fell, like fish food flakes in an aquarium. Fast and whirling, they filled the space around you. You splashed about, jumping, opening up your mouth to catch it with your tongue. Big and quick they spun, and it was only when one got stuck in your eyelashes that you noticed your mom snapping pictures, cackling, and cursing the broken flash. She promised to help you make a snowman, a first friend to help you meet other kids who would come out and play in your front yard. But as soon as you bent down to pick up snow for a snowball, it stopped. You looked up to the sky for reassurance, but nothing came. You panicked. Quickly, you scraped up what you could to make a snowball, hoping it could be big enough to be the belly of the snowman you were going to make with your mom. But the snow stopped falling. It picked up and left you as quickly as it came. 

    Later on the 8s, you heard that what happened on your deck was called a snowsquall. You thought though, that a better term for it was a joke. Years later, when you were cleaning out your mom’s house and went through her albums, you found one marked “Maryland.” On the binding was a piece of tape marked with the year that you and she first moved there. You flipped through, trying to recall the squall, wondering what your first snow looked like, glad that your mom took pictures. Finally, you find it. You are on the deck in your swim trunk hat, holding what looks like a pale, white kumquat in your hand. You scanned the photo for the big, flat flakes you remember, squinting hard, wondering if the spots you see in the picture are real indeed real snowflakes, perspective, or old age. 

    From a distance, it’s all so hard to tell.

    Jasmine Kuzner

  • Dagger

    Dagger

    Andrea Lynn Koohi

    Life is chaos and crumpled clothing leaking from suitcases on the floor. We’re staying in a room at my mother’s friend’s place because there’s nowhere else to go. I don’t know where our furniture went, or the box of toys I taped in haste, or my mother who left while I slept last night. I have a mattress on the floor. I brought my cactus, our cat, my CD player, and outside the window I can see it now – the feather-light arrival of my favourite season. My body jumps just after my heart, and I slide the window open to breathe the change. I hold out my hand to the falling snow, the friend I’ve been waiting so fervently for, the joy that was certain to come, to stay. But then: a dagger falls in the center of my palm; I yank my hand back inside the room, gaze at the pool of red that’s forming, wonder at the compression of pain into something so small. I’m angry and I cry, and someone I don’t know stands in the doorway and asks what happened. I tell her an icicle fell on my hand and she laughs a little and says I’ll be fine, says she might have a Band-Aid inside her purse. But I won’t be fine because Winter did this, and how could it do this when I loved it so? When did it join ranks with all the rest? The next day it snows as I walk to school, fresh layers on the ground like icing sugar. Thick flakes glisten, fall gently for me, but still I feel the throb beneath the bandage on my palm, so I don’t put my heart out, just keep my eyes down, scour the sugar for nails and glass.

    Andrea Lynn Koohi

  • Followed?

    Followed?

    Nicola Ashbrook

    Alina wades through the deep powdery snow, her snow-shoes crunch-mashing, crunch-mashing. It’s silent in the forest, save for her feet.

    She knows this trail well, the pattern of Spruce trees like a 3D map to her. She stops to look at a lichen fluffing from an upper branch; to wonder at the path of a hare whose footprints have left gentle indentations. 

    She approaches the old mill, hesitating in admiration at the rapids coursing beside it, as she does every day. There’s a straight line where the river ice turns to turgid water, as though God himself climbed down with his giant ruler to ensure an accurate edge. Alina smiles at the thought before continuing her hike.

    At each pause to inspect the landscape, she listens for the silence. It’s there – her ears thrum with it. But the forest doesn’t feel silent today. She senses a presence behind her but can’t see anything when she turns to check – just her usual arboreal playground. 

    She involuntarily speeds up, looking back more often, the frigid air nipping at her cheeks. Perhaps it’s a pine marten, she tells herself, or a wolf. Maybe even a lynx. The thought reassures her: those creatures are shy – they won’t approach.

    Alina reaches a hillock, casting her eyes behind every tree. She shakes her head. She’s never doubted the forest in her life; never paid heed to the folklore, the rumours of a clawed beast.

    The horizon pulls the sun from the sky, painting everything strawberry ice-cream. Alina looks heavenward at the candyfloss treetops. 

    She marches on, using her poles for extra propulsion. A twig snaps. She hears the crunch of her steps duplicated behind her. She pauses, turns. 

    Silence.

    Light evaporates quickly at this time of day. Brilliant white fades to grayscale, shadows elongate and deepen. 

    A giant wolverine, some say, whose eyes glow crimson. Others talk of a rabid bear, eight feet tall, salivating for flesh. 

    Alina pushes on, her sense of unease magnifying. The stories cannot be true. The forest, her familiar friend, sweeps her forward – branches and roots, its fingers and toes – urging her onward. 

    It’s true some tourists didn’t return after a hike last month, but they were likely ill-equipped for the temperatures; exposure’s a quick killer at twenty below.

    The dusk closes in, liquid darkness running into the gaps between trees. Alina switches on her head torch, its beam casting a bobbing circle of yellow safety. Snow begins to fall again, juicy flakes tickling at her eyelashes. The flurry quickly thickens, softens the landscape, comforts her.

    But the foreboding grows. A wisp of evil weaves between trunks, not just behind her, but sometimes to her left, sometimes her right: moving, surrounding, constricting. Alina inhales it. It metastasises, creeping to her most vulnerable corners.

    She stumbles. 

    The Kota is close now, Alina’s almost there. She’ll light a fire, drink her berry juice, eat her supper. She’ll feel safe. She speeds up, poles clashing with trunks in her haste. Her hand meets the worn handle, and her head whips backward, to check she’s really alone. 

    The red eyes she fears do not stare back.

    Alina goes into the Kota, prepares for dinner and sleep, while puffs of breath condensate on the windows and a thousand claws skitter the walls.

    Nicola Ashbrook

  • My Shadow’s Shadow

    My Shadow’s Shadow

    Cheryl Skory Suma

    Before

    Before the fall, I did not appreciate the power of memories. They were of the forest’s shadow, easily eclipsed by the echo of my forward footsteps upon the broken parts of my now.

    ***

    After

    Once I’d become my shadow’s shadow, I saw memories through new stalker’s eyes. I became the observer, concealed behind a forest of lost snapshots of me.

    ***

    Before

    My memories were too aggressive. Painfully thrusting themselves to the forefront or tugging me backward to a past best left behind. Even the innocent were more of a distraction than something I cherished. I was focused forward.

    ***

    After

    Post the fall, I wished only to travel back in time; to turn around and scoop up those lost comrades. To hold them under my cloak, both the innocent and the pained, lovingly cocooned together. Without exception.

    ***

    Before

    I saw memories as slithering, living things. Like earthworms wriggling out of the ground to chase the rain’s song, memories had a sly way of slipping in and out of my consciousness, of gleefully appearing without warning to disrupt my present. The cruel ones were experts at waiting to pounce, cunningly curled up in the darkness until the time was right to show themselves—to remind me of all the burdens and hurt they cradled.

    It wasn’t their fault. Like me, memories were at the mercy of time. Time changed us both, without consideration and with few concessions. Memories found a way to embrace time’s wreckage. As the moss that finds new life upon the fallen oak’s shattered trunk, my memories had morphed into something new. They demanded I support their vision even though they’d managed to recklessly color themselves with experiences and emotions that were never part of their beginnings, or mine.

    Memories were such a negative presence in my life that I took them for granted. Until I fell.

    ***

    After

    Until a patch of ice on a blustery, snowy day. Until a misstep that birthed a head injury. In that instant, a large company of my memories and I parted ways. They flung themselves free, to scatter like mirror twins along with the swirling snowflakes that danced upward into the sky, riding the wind as I lay on my back, watching until my eyes blurred and the last stragglers melted on my lashes.

    Suddenly, I became a mess of “Couldn’t” s. I couldn’t wash my face without vertigo shoving me over. I couldn’t write without leaving out expected prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions. I had trouble finding simple words or replaced the desired word with something that sounded or looked the same but wasn’t. I couldn’t smile and say, “Yes, that was a great day,” when my family told a story—a story from a past where I’d lived and loved, but now couldn’t remember.

    A large piece of me was left behind on that ice, sliding sideways until coming to rest roadside. No matter how much I’ve tried to retrace my steps, I never found what the snowflakes so merrily coveted. My memories enjoyed their new freedom and chose not to return.

    No more past stories to be tainted by time, no thoughts snaking in the basement, no happy memories swinging defiantly in the gallows. Just clean, crisp, nothingness. A decade long hole in my life. The head injury decided which memories were worthwhile and which were too heavy to carry on, and it didn’t care to sort through the good and the bad—it dumped them all. It had its own forward focus.

    The encampment that once sheltered my memories now burnt to the ground, I began to feel invisible. Most of my memories were truly lost, although some would occasionally pass by to whisper in the ears of my loved ones, allowing them to share their version of my lost stories. Hearing it second hand didn’t feel the same; the stories didn’t engulf me the way the memories did when they still wriggled around within me. They were not mine. They were not real.

    I hungrily looked at photographs from those lost years, hoping to tempt back that nagging tickle. To feel memories’ insistence for acknowledgement—so they could validate that I had a past worthy of remembering. When this failed, I would flee to walk circles around the block. Determined to go anywhere the quiet photographs were not, but with nowhere to go.

    ***

    After the Shadow’s Gift

    Post the fall, the initial deficits and memory loss forced me to sell my business—I had to leave behind the healthcare company I’d founded. Nor could I return to my previous career as a Speech-Language Pathologist. I had to find a new voice.

    In my career, I had worked with TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) patients. So I knew that if I wanted to heal, I should exercise my brain through math, word puzzles, reading. This led me to reconnect with my first love, writing. It took five years, but eventually, I found acceptance. I found ways to embrace my reborn self and the lessons of my head injury. Diving back into writing was only the first gift.

    I discovered that I could leave unkind slithering thoughts in the shadows; it was in my power to forget them. I could use the absence of their biases to move forward free of the burden of past hurts. As new memories were born, I could allow them to wriggle through my consciousness and poke without competition at my future present—I could birth my own forest of recollections to echo new life choices.

    I learned to slow down and appreciate life’s gifts more. This was a new me—one with a past full of holes. Perhaps, a trail of holes was just fine and dandy. It was the wholeness I could make of today that mattered.

    These choices, this acceptance of my reborn self—it ensured that my new memories and I could cast our own shadow, instead of only belonging to those we’d left behind.

    Cheryl Skory Suma