My father stands at the center of distant summers woven from spruce trees and knee-high weeds and sizzling streaks of honeybees. Alone.
I see the sapphire sky, his greying stubble, his scalp studded with sweat. I hear his voice in the prairie silence. Monosyllabic in most settings, he brims with words in the bee yard, unsolicited lectures on the curative effects of propolis, the difference between capped and brood cells, burr and bridge comb.
I nod through his lessons. He knows I’m not listening.
He lights the edge of a newspaper and furls it into a cone that he blows down, making it puff like an herbal healer’s pipe. He slips it into the smoker, followed by a handful of cedar shavings. The shavings cling to the fissures between his bratwurst fingers. His hands are graceless in any context but this.
He puffs the smoker three times. The leather bellows rasp. The spout groans cedar smoke that rises warm and sweet over the abandoned Philpott yard, where he keeps thirty-two beehives, and where he brought me today to see a queen.
I hate the Philpott house. The windows are smashed. The paint and shingles have peeled. Canola grows in the fields the family once owned, and my father’s bees pollinate their loss.
He comforts me. “Don’t worry. They were an ordinary family. Nothing tragic about them.”
“So why’d they leave?”
“Who knows? Maybe they needed a fresh start.”
Three boxes make a beehive, and there are nine frames to a box. Stitches of wax hold each frame tight to the wood, and bee glue turns the boxes into a single tower that he methodically deconstructs. Unbroken focus at every step. Never a centimetre off. An almost reverent precision that I wish my mother could see when he forgets their anniversary, or lets slip an off-colour remark he doesn’t apologize for, or coughs in movie theaters, or nods impatiently at check-out tills, or when she complains that he only married her because of her looks.
A flutter of cedar smoke. The bees grow louder. He assures me they’re calm, and I believe him. His word is as true as the maneuvers that clear away the excess wax and pry each frame from its container. He never wears gloves. When stung on the hand, he uses his metal hive tool to pinch out the venom sac without spilling a drop, a sober exactness that amazes me every time I see it.
Six frames in, he smiles behind his veil. “Here she is.” He pushes his index finger into the fizzing rectangle of bees. “She’s a beauty,” my father whispers. “See her?”
I see her. She’s marked on the head with a dollop of pink paint. While the drones vibrate madly, she strolls through them with elegance, hauling a thorax twice as long as theirs. Sunlight hits her back and spins a radial of gold that looks like a wedding ring, evaporating.
Owen Schalk is a writer from rural Manitoba. He is a columnist at Canadian Dimension magazine and has contributed to non-fiction publications including Jacobin, Liberated Texts, and Monthly Review. His fiction work has appeared in Quagmire Literary Magazine, antilang., Fairlight Books, and others. His book on Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan will be published by Lorimer Books in September 2023.
Leave the office. Get in the elevator. Hold your breath as you feel your stomach lurch into your throat. Make a dash for the exit. In the car, wait for the traffic to move. Collapse on the sofa with a glass of wine. Try to let your mind go blank. It’ll be okay. Your therapist said things are getting better. The anxiety attacks, the mad runs to the toilet every few hours to throw up, they are beginning to subside. You are getting better. You are getting better.
Each day stretches into the next without much distinction. What few hours of sleep you do manage are plagued by scenes of faceless men drowning in a darkness that persists into wakefulness. Todd will be coming round soon. You tried to distance yourself, the unread messages stacking up on your hardly-used phone, but still he turns up each week: husband from a life you’ve left behind, now returning with guilt and flowers. It’s not him, you think. It’s the hayfever. It’s the stress of work.
You haven’t broken up. Not technically. You just can’t seem to remember where he fits within the chaos that your life has become. He moved out a week after your brother died. Wanted to give you space, as he put it, and the gap has simply never been closed. Now he is here again, unable to stay away when the only thing you need is time alone, and you have to remind yourself how to smile.
You take the flowers and, when he’s not looking, dump them in the trash. The smell of wilted roses masked by rotting fruit. He asks how things are going, and you say they’re getting better. The hallucinations have stopped, and you are beginning to picture your brother in a better light. Before the bridge. Before the water took his body.
”That’s good,” Todd says. You want to punch him. You want to grab him and tell him everything you’re feeling, and then you want him to fuck you just like he’s talked about fucking countless other women. You remember how alive they had sounded in his stories. The women back at uni with blond hair and big tits and a solid grasp of reality, abandoning themselves to the moment. How far removed they seem from your own attempts at a subdued life.
Could that really have been you? The makeup and expensive dinners. The countless dates while Todd pleaded for your attention. Those years existed, of course, hidden somewhere amongst the naivety of blossoming romance, but now they hardly seem real. As if you’re remembering a fiction of a life, played out on a theatre screen to an empty room.
You sit there listening to him talk, or rather not listening but imagining the two of you upstairs in the bed you’ve hardly used. ”I have tickets to a play,” he says, and you’re not paying attention, so you nod. ”It’s a date.” He seems happier after that. As if this alone is proof of your recovery. He tells you about a piece he’s working on—a new take on Cheval—and for once you can understand. It’s getting dark now, but he doesn’t make any move to leave. It’s okay. You weren’t planning on sleeping anyway.
Two days pass in a whirlwind of toilet stalls and terror. You long for the day you can find the mundanity in it all. The day when the world comes crashing down around you, and instead of filling you with blackness, it takes you with it, and you look back with every ounce of clarity that has been taken from you.
When it’s time to meet Todd, you think about backing out. But he’ll only come and find you. ”It’s for your own good,” he’ll say, and you won’t have the heart to say no, won’t have the guts.
You wish he would stop trying to help. He believes he can control everything around him. Every problem he sees, including you, is something to be fixed. How blissful it would be to live in such ignorance.
It’s cold out, and you find him smoking at the back of the queue.
”You look nice,” he says, and although you know it’s not true, you manage to smile awkwardly.
”I thought of you as soon as I saw the advert,” he says, ”it’s about a girl who grows up on a remote island. When she comes to the mainland, she has a breakdown and has to be sectioned.”
Is he joking? He must be joking. You were just telling him how much better you’re doing. Why would he put that in jeopardy now? But you don’t have the nerve to leave and so you slowly inch along until you’re sitting in the theater and the play’s about to start.
He was right, of course. You could see yourself in the girl on stage. You could see yourself in the tired way she moved, and the heavy bags under her eyes. You could see yourself in the countless times she had been through the same performance, repeated ad nauseam until everything lost its meaning. You are comforted in this way. Knowing that there are other people out there, forced into the same endless cycles, all trying to appear sane.
You try to tell him this, to thank him for bringing you, but he doesn’t understand. He thinks you’re disparaging the play.
”I knew it was a mistake,” he says. ”I should never have brought you.”
There is no point arguing, so you keep quiet, and then the two of you are back at your flat. He’s put a record on, and you’re drinking another bottle of Bordeaux. The sound and taste of all the sophistication that has lost its appeal. You try to remember a time long ago, when he was still young and the madness had not yet set in. It’s like trying to climb a pole submerged in tar. Unfamiliar faces appear, teasing you with memories that are not, and perhaps never were your own.
You’re in the bedroom now. The sheets crack with starch as he climbs in after you. You no longer want him as you did the other night. Passion and lust are now concepts made vague by a much deeper desire that has arisen within you. Peace.
Despite this, you do not protest as he climbs on top of you. In the darkness a world of possibilities calls out, unheard over the groans of something like passion.
Afterwards, he rolls over and falls into a deep sleep. It’s late, but you’re wide awake. You think about the girl in the play, and the hundred more times she will have to give the same performance. You think of the audiences that will fail to see how tired she has become. No one is coming to save the girl. Tomorrow will come and you will leave for work. The girl will walk out on stage and you will run for the bathroom. Your time will never come, and nothing will ever change. And nothing should ever change.
Rory Perkins is a British writer focusing on shorter works about the human experience. Currently working in the energy industry, he writes whenever he can find the time, and hopes one day to publish a collection of flash fiction.
My roommate thinks I’m gay, and I haven’t corrected her. I mean, sure, Kara and I met in our fashion design class, and sure, she knows I crush on Oscar Isaac, and sure, I told her fiancé as much so he wouldn’t be jealous, and sure, I might’ve kissed him when Kara was passed out on Malbec and he and I were sharing a joint, and sure, I told him—swore to him—I wouldn’t breathe a word to her.
And so I don’t. I mean, I swore on my grandmother’s grave, and maybe she’s not technically dead yet, but it’s not like he has anything to worry about. It’s not like I’m going to brag I kissed some guy with no chin and a lopsided franken-smile. I still don’t know how he got with Kara (unless it’s his trust fund; of course it’s his trust fund) because she’s way too good for him. That’s what I’ll say when she wakes, after I hand her some Gatorade and tell her to drink up. And when she says Stop, you sound jealous, I’ll let myself blush even though I’m good about hiding that sort of thing, have known how to hide it since eighth grade and that time with Jay behind the band room, but now—now I’ll let her see the desire coloring my face, turning my lips red like the time I borrowed her makeup. And I’ll want her to say she understands, to not pull away saying she needs a shower, to not shoo me out even though she’s been naked in front of me tons before, to not click the bathroom door shut so I can’t smell her body wash, leaving me on the other side thinking about my promise to her fiancé, about the word fiancé and how cloying it sounds—so fucking French and upper class—and I’ll realize they’re probably made for each other, right?
Or maybe I do tell her about the kiss, but not until she has downed her Gatorade and three Advil and is munching on the avocado toast she loves, thanking me for being such a good roommate then pausing when she sees my face darken. What is it? she’ll say. Tell me. So I’ll sit down and hold her hands and say I didn’t mean to hurt her, because isn’t that what they say in the movies? And sure, she’ll laugh at first, as if I’m fucking with her, until I tell her it was all my fault, until I insist that I’m the one to blame, and maybe I am, though of course she won’t believe that. She’s seen the warning signs for months now—not that her fiancé likes guys, but that he can’t be trusted, could never be trusted. Wasn’t he in another relationship when they first got together? Wasn’t she the other woman, maybe she’s always been the other woman? That’s what her eyes will say when she says thank you, just murmurs it, then says she needs to be alone. And I’ll realize what a stupid thing I’ve done, all over a kiss, and not a very good one—lasted only seconds with barely any tongue—and her bedroom door will click shut like it never does and there’s nothing left to do but slide the remains of her avocado toast into the trash.
Or no, I really don’t tell her, not when she wakes up the next morning, her hair smelling of weed, a string of drool plastered across her cheek. I say she looks like shit, but she hears the love in my voice, so she showers and calls me into the bathroom to tell me I simply have to join her at her bachelorette party, and I sit on the toilet and smell her cantaloupe body wash and say sure, why not, even though I’m not up for it, even though the party will end with me crammed into the corner booth at The Eagle, empty shot glasses scattered around us, and her girlfriend Tiffany next to me, insisting I switch teams for the night. And sure, I might be tempted, but it’s Tiff. Tiff, who still attends Young Republican meetings, who’s engaged to some MBA who everybody knows she’ll divorce in two years, Tiff who wears fucking body glitter—and there’s no way I’d let that rub off on me even if she is hot—so yeah, I might be tempted, but by then Kara will be crying, bawling huge drunk girl tears about whether she’s ready—really ready—and I’ll want to scream NO! but instead I’ll say Look at me girlfriend and snap my fingers in my best parody of the queen they think I am, and I’ll say You’ve got this though of course she doesn’t, none of us do. And if I let anything slip about how I kissed her fiancé, it’ll be later, to Tiff, when I lean into her mouth even though I know I shouldn’t since Tiff can’t keep a fucking secret about anything, and it won’t be out of spite, no matter what everyone says.
Joshua Jones Lofflin’s writing has appeared in The Best Microfiction, The Best Small Fictions, The Cincinnati Review, CRAFT, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He lives in Maryland. Find him on Twitter @jjlofflin or visit his website: jjlofflin.com
He put his socks on first. I’d never seen anyone dress that way before. Standing in the middle of the wavy blue rug in front of his bed, he pulled on one after the other without losing his balance.
We lived two buildings apart in the same apartment complex, but to get here, we used Grindr.
Once we tapped each other, he made me comfortable and horny enough with dirty talk and dick pics to walk over—I wouldn’t have gone, if he wasn’t so close—then into the bedroom, to sit on the bed and kiss me mid-sentence.
I never knew when to shut up: You taste, like, so good.
So good that words crumbled into grunts and breaths and yelps so fast that I couldn’t stop, didn’t want to. Nor did he, until he found an angle that allowed him to finish.
When he pulled out, I didn’t feel lessened or empty or shamed, but open and relaxed and warm and—
He was dressing. After the socks, he found his underwear wadded at the foot of the bed, where I lay uncovered and easy.
“God,” I said, as he slid his tan, muscled leg into his jeans, “that was like… I don’t ever want to move.”
His shirt was on now, blotted and purple. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to pack. I’m moving tomorrow.”
“Like, to another building?”
“Another state. Out west, a fifteen-hour drive.”
I felt exposed only then, the sheets around my knees, the a/c’s chilling touch at my waist.
While I dressed, he put books into boxes and totes I hadn’t noticed earlier.
“If you don’t want to sleep alone, I’ll be just over there.” I pointed across the grassy courtyard.
He said thanks, and I walked home through the sticky, pulsating night, wondering how long he had wanted me out of there.
Lukas Tallent is the author of The Compromising Position. His work has recently appeared in Fast Pop Lit, Door is a Jar, Maudlin House, and many other places. He writes the substack, LTXXX, and lives in New York City.
But how to explain to you the phantoms that motivate a hunger like mine? Once I had a hankering for honey so strong I ate nothing without it for a week. Our honey jar was old, the golden insides turned cold—in some places, crystalized. You told me to just buy another jar, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the effort, the bees, all those trips back and forth to the hive. To not attempt to use it up seemed, to me, a cruelty. The night before you finally admitted there was someone else, I was contentedly working my way through the same old jar. It was late and I was tired and there were no clean knives left to scoop out the dregs, so I used a fork. When you caught me in the dim of the kitchen, I had already excavated down to the bottommost layer, where there was a surprise pocket of soft remains, a place where the crystals hadn’t yet hardened. I was only trying to salvage the last of that smoothness. Still it kept slipping through the tines.
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salamander, Passages North, Arts & Letters, and Cincinnati Review‘s miCRo series, among others. In 2022, her collection was a runner-up for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Alyson teaches and edits in New Jersey. Find her @swellspoken and at alysondutemple.com.
my body, your body, our bodies, bodies, fading in and out and in and out until suddenly we are both nothing, nothing but whispers that echo like leaves beneath our feet, nothing but whispers like the creaking of a tree on a hill, nothing but whispers like i love you to people we will never hold again
i am in and out and in and out of love with you, with me, with your body as we tumble into bed, with my hair as i will it to grow every day, with the growing comfort of us, i love you like i love the sun after an especially cold winter, the way the sun can take away all the darkness that festers inside me, i wonder if we would fall in love again if given a chance, i wonder if we were meant to be or if we were a mistake i learned to love, i have made so many mistakes and i have never learned how to love any of them and still i wonder if you love me the same way i loved the girl i used to be
i don’t think this is a love poem, i am so scared, scared that if your eyes ever set upon this, scared that if you ever heard these words, these whispers, the faint murmuring of my voice, you would think that i don’t love you, that i don’t love you with my whole heart, when the truth is my body is made of love for you, but this isn’t a love poem, it’s an outpouring, a river from my fingertips, from my mouth, a form of love that i just don’t know how to give
time let us grow up, grow close, shed our skin for new bodies, sometimes i wonder how you can love me after everything i’ve done, after everyone i’ve been, how many people have you loved by loving me, will you continue to love me if i continue to fade, will you love me if i fade in and out and in and out, i am not a ghost but i am scared that someday i might disappear, fade away until i am only a memory of someone you could have loved
Josafina Garcia is a writer, photographer, and zinester just trying to figure things out. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2023 with a degree in Integrative Studies. Her future is unknown, but she is ready to head down whatever path lies ahead.
Come here. Among the elbows of deciduous trees and lighthouse beacons of fireflies. I want you close enough to feel the tightrope tension when I say nothing with a full mouth. My throat dissolves each I love you thatpromises to earthquake my roots before it hits the pink of my tongue.
So stay there. Between mountains and the possibility we might not survive you. It’s too expensive to bury the codependency and broken vows hidden in the basement. Consider the black and blue of falling for someone who can love you out loud.
James Roach (they/he) is a queer/trans poet who currently resides in Olympia, Washington.
You will get arrested for the first time, under the disdainful eye of the Victoria’s Secret regional manager. Upon seeing you chained to the front of the store chanting about trees, she will sigh, roll her eyes, and say, “Oh, it’s you,” crossing her arms over her smart black blazer.
But first, you will teach others on your dorm floor how to do laundry. How to separate the loads—what needs cold water and what wants hot. How to measure and where to pour the soap. How to remove clothes from the dryer right away, warm. How to hold them to your face and breathe, though that isn’t part of doing laundry. But isn’t it?
You will navigate public transit home from the Castro on Halloween while rolling on MDMA with your friend, all wigs and shouting. You will learn to find your way using the hills and the stars as guides, even though they double themselves as you hold yourself against a lamppost. You will know that sometimes shame smells like coconut rum.
You will let Eva Hesse save your soul more than once. You will come to understand that bell hooks and Angela Davis have the answer for everything. You will let Fiona Apple and Tracy Chapman rock you to sleep. You will have your fake ID confiscated at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at Great American Music Hall, but you will not hold that against them. You will discover that you are more of a Brontë sisters person than a Jane Austen person, which is saying a lot.
You will smoke clove cigarettes under the neon signs in the Mission, the smoke curling into a vision of your future like a horoscope, while you wait for the bus on an inappropriate street corner, electricity crackling overhead.
You will stare down the man in workshop who describes the poem about your grandmother’s death as being “not credible.” Your face will grow hot, its own incredulity. In that moment, you will grow up and resolve to be more choosy about the people you fuck. You will struggle to imagine the future: that you will find a life that is everything you could possibly want.
You will feel tempted to become a religion major, a pull that will make no sense to you as an agnostic. The only gods you have known have been horses and the sound of their hooves splashing through creeks.
You will feel kinship with your elderly Irish Catholic World Religion professor, and will be drawn in by his warmth, a grandfather free from disdain, the grandfather you did not have.
It will make no logical sense to you, until you discover that you are the Buddhist you will write term papers about. You will practice the bliss of sitting in silence, watching the breath that breathes you. You will embrace the agony of aching knees as you watch your spinning, obsessive thoughts and try not to hate them. You will learn that your love of trees and the moon is not merely an exercise as a poet, not only something to digest and regurgitate for workshop.
You will discover that everything is holy. This will happen, too.
Christy Tending (she/they) is an activist, writer, and mama living in Oakland, California. Their work has been published in Longreads, Catapult, and Electric Literature, among many others. Their first book, High Priestess of the Apocalypse, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2024. You can learn more about their work at christytending.com or follow Christy on Twitter @christytending.
Mama always called me a lost little bird. Said my first month of life I held my mouth agape in colic, chirping for more but never getting enough. As a child, I lived with all my belongings sprawled out on the floor, preferring my drawers and closet empty, opening and shutting them endlessly, looking for something.
And so I moved through life with my breadcrumbs trailing to nowhere. I watched other people’s lives. I could tell you what petiteSami19 wore last week in every outfit video, or the story of live_luv_heal chronicling her cancer diagnosis and the exact moment she started losing her hair, or every step professorcrafter took to transform an old pair of jeans into a mini-skirt, but could I do it myself? Nope.
What did I want in life? Perhaps if I scrolled a little more, I’d find an answer. That’s how I ended up in this drippy black-lit basement of a forgotten, boarded up house near campus.
“So what’ll it be?” Dr3amM4ker said, voice soft, almost imperceptible. A friendly painted face smiled, fluorescent in the black light. A midnight blue starburst surrounded one eye, bright pink the other.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“What dream do you want?” The pink eye looked at me.
“Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that why I’m paying you?” My finger poked the foam through a crack in the vinyl chair.
They sighed. “When you were a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up?”
I’ll never forget Mama’s red-hot face at career day in fifth grade. I stood before the room full of parents, lacking a costume, and proclaimed my desire to remain a child the rest of my life. I felt the heat radiating off of Mama’s face on the drive home. Her silence burned deep.
I ripped out a piece of foam and rolled it between my fingers. “Nothing.” I said.
“Hmm.” Dr3amM4ker’s neon nails drummed the cooler top they used as a desk. The blue eye surveyed me. “That’ll cost you more. A dream from scratch. I can’t remember the last time…”
“I’ve given you all the money I have.”
Maybe I should have listened to Mama. She told me to study pharmacy. Her feeds touted job security, decent pay, the good it will do for the aging population. She told me this while scrolling on her phone.
She said, “You might as well do something that lets you enjoy life a bit.”
What life? I thought. My whole life was out there already, hundreds of childhood photos Mama posted. Me at my first soccer game, huddled with the team, her caption Future Mia Hamm! But I only remembered plucking dandelions on the field, leaving with pockets full of dirt, the scent of earth lingering on my fingers. After one game, a worm escaped my pocket and crawled across the car console and onto Mama’s arm. She yelped and reached for it, but I beat her to it. I shoved the worm in my mouth. She told me to spit it out. I swallowed.
My major remained undeclared.
The vinyl moaned beneath me as I shifted to extract my wallet. “I have meal tickets. I’ll give you my card.”
“No. I can’t do that. What will you do with yourself then, without food?” Dr3amM4ker said.
“What will I do with myself, living a life I don’t know how to live?”
The drumming nails stopped.
The pink eye engulfed me.
“You dream.”
I never told Mama I failed two classes last semester. What was the point of attending if the work only fed the entangled path of breadcrumbs that lead to nowhere? I couldn’t bear to see Mama’s red-hot face again. For her to see that I was nothing but a mockingbird, faking my way through. That I wasn’t bold and strong like the goddess Diana, as she called me, saying my moon blood would make me move tides, be fertile, bear children, change the world.
A burden had pressed so heavily on my chest all I could do was empty my closet and crawl in. A burden that perhaps a dream, any dream would lift.
“Occasionally, I allow an exchange of dreams but…” Dr3amM4ker drummed their nails again.
We agreed the meal tickets would suffice.
“Lie back now and close your eyes.”
“Will it hurt?” I asked.
“Maybe a little tingle. Although, not all dreams are painless.” They affixed tubes to my nose. The pink and blue starburst eyes shimmered in the dark.
A switch clicked.
A machine hummed.
A warmth coursed through my body and beads of sweat dotted my skin.
“Tell me, what do you see?” They asked.
I inhaled. Let the air fill my lungs. Let it seep into my mouth and cool my tongue. The scent left me breathless. “Earthworms emerge from their winter sleep. And the rain is warm, the first of spring.”
“Good. Keep going.”
But my throat caught. Words wouldn’t form. All I could do was chirrup. Pink and blue swirled around me. I was in the air, then on the ground. I smacked my lips. I kissed the soil. An earthy taste squished in my mouth.
I awoke to darkness. To an ache in my head that ran down my spine. I groaned and rolled over. My fingers held the scent of the earth. The moon cast pale light across my bedroom floor and to my closet. The door ajar. Standing up, I cradled my aching head in my hand and stepped carefully over my belongings scattered across the floor. I reached the door. I slid it open. What I found released from me a barking laughter, sent my belly aflutter. A single dandelion laid on the closet floor, glowing in the moonbeam like a miniature sun.
Abigail Kemske (she/her) is a writer from the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She finds endless inspiration for her stories wandering around the forests surrounding her home. When she isn’t writing, she can be found hiking, biking, or spending time with her spouse, two children, and their cat.
