If ever someone attempted to strike fear into your heart, I sense disappointment would follow. The traces you leave behind prove your valor: back torn open, wings emerging. You fly toward a setting sun, an aroma crisp and bitterly sweet in your wake. Though men may try questioning you as they quake in your presence, you remain untouchable. The sweetness of cherry couldn’t satisfy you; you sought the tangy taste of acid and reminded the woman following behind you, waiting to do life’s most vulnerable deed, that she, too, could know what it means to be invincible, if only she lifted the bacteria-laden stick sitting atop the aluminum dispenser, if only she took a risk and raised each tiny organism you left behind to her lips.
Alicia Swain is a feminist poet and author living in Richmond, VA. Her debut poetry collection, Steel Slides and Yellow Walls, releases in August of 2025 with Belle Isle Books. Her work appears in publications such as The Vehicle, Half and One, and The Closed Eye Open. She can be found on her website at aliciaswain.com, on Bluesky as aliciamswain.bsky.social, and on Instagram as @aliciamswain.
Because only a woman could endure such atrocities to her crust, gutted inside out for the pleasure of man and still be expected to make him breakfast in the morning.
Only a woman could be told her rotting flesh is a result of her own flow and ebb, that her salty waves are self-inflicted, too sensitive, too soft, too easy to get a rise out of.
But it isn’t her fault that her body rejects your half-hearted apologies, your paper straws dumped in her stomach, a manufactured “forgive me” while you pump her lungs with smoke.
She begged you to stop, sent you letters of warning. Flames filled your cities, winds ripped your homes from their foundations. She fought so hard that her skin cracked and she almost swallowed you whole. And it still wasn’t enough.
Of course Nature is a Mother, because only a woman could lose the right to her own body and then be condemned for giving birth to the apocalypse.
Makayla Edwards is a creative nonfiction writer and occasional poet. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing at Ball State University, where she also received her B.A. in English Studies. She is also an intern for the literary journal River Teeth where she helps manage social media and reads for their daughter magazine Beautiful Things (you should totally check them out). Makayla’s work has been featured in Ball State University’s Odyssey and The Digital Literature Review, as well as her childhood closet wall. In her free time, she enjoys half-finishing crosswords and shamelessly reading romance novels.
The concluding sentiment at the family meeting, by which I mean a discussion my parents initiated with me, by which I mean I was told to sit down on the living room couch and listen while they did all the talking, was, Also, boys don’t like overweight girls, a sort of cherry on top of the sundae if you will, but not an actual sundae of course, because that’s the sort of indulgence that landed us here in the first place, a last ditch effort to get the point across after measured pleading and reasoning, a final appeal that would surely break the spell, thereby breaking the motion of hand to mouth, because who doesn’t want to be desired by boys? If they had just mentioned that on day one, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
It turns out that the two people who were meant to love me unconditionally had actually been silently taking notes, waiting for the moment when it became clear that they had no choice but to intervene—this extra 15 pounds I was carrying around had officially gotten out of hand, rendering me unappealing, and this is when I learned how truly important it is to always remain cognizant of the opinions of others.
Armed with this valuable lesson, I headed off to college where I drank whatever cold bottle was placed into my open palm and slept with boys simply because they desired me, never once asking myself if I wanted them in return, and I was careful not to get attached because that’s not what cool girls do. I went to the gym with my roommate, at first simply for something to do, and then after dropping some weight, kept at it because it felt good to be able to share clothes with friends, snapping black bodysuits at the crotch and sliding miniskirts up onto my hips, and when I arrived home for break, my newly slimmed body like a friend I was bringing to meet my parents, I was met with open arms and eager eyes, acutely aware that approval smiles differently, approval hugs longer, approval offers seconds and dessert, approval means keep it up and we’ll all be just fine.
Amy Allen’s poetry and fiction has been published in a variety of literary journals, and her poetry chapbook, Mountain Offerings, was released in April of 2024. She lives in Shelburne, Vermont, where she is thankful to be surrounded by mountains, water and wildlife, and she owns All of the Write Words, a freelance writing/editing business. Amy currently serves as her town’s Poet Laureate, a position that includes outreach work with local schools and organizations.
I cradled the tree in its pot for a coworker over Zoom. It’s just like you, she said.
I showed her the swan-necked watering can that held no more than a pint. Don’t overwater it, the lady at the garden store said.
My coworker didn’t know that the lush, green slope reminded me of the backyard of the house I grew up in, when my legs were so small it took all my breath to run its length past the apple trees to the woods at the other end. How I’d climb up with my siblings to eat apples that swirled green and red. You’ll get sick to your stomach, my dad said.
The bonsai tree was bright and prickly. Juniperus communis: juniper. Its branches arced over the pot and brushed the moss and stones below in a graceful bow. Green and brown on gray and orange: the colors of 70’s office buildings, like where my dentist was as a child, or where I had started seeing a therapist. They really gave you a raw deal, he used to say.
The moss is what I loved. Stems crisscrossing and hugging as if laying out a pine needle floor. It sprawled over the pot and reached up to embrace the tree trunk. Pleurozium schreberi: sheet moss. It covers forests from Greenland to New Mexico. A website claimed that it helps preserve nutrients and protect tree roots in case of overwatering. Don’t overwater it, the lady at the garden store said.
My first bonsai didn’t have moss. I bought it with the lunch money my parents had given me for a field trip to Quincy Market when I was in seventh grade. Its rocks were jagged, imposing. The tree grew over tranquil desolation. I pictured myself in miniature, walking the dirt along the pot’s edge with a Zen Koan settling in my mind. I can hardly recall it now: the one where a teacher tells a prospective student he can’t learn anything until he’s emptied his cup of tea.
The browning started at the outer edges. Then it crept inwards. I figured I wasn’t watering it enough. Was that possible? Don’t overwater it, the lady at the garden store said.
I bought a spritz bottle and misted every three days. Once a week, I used the swan-necked watering can. The moss turned beige and then bleach yellow. I checked a book on bonsai care. Tap water can cause browning. I bought a gallon jug of filtered water and poured it into the pint-size can. The moss shrank from the side of the pot, curling into itself as if clutching a wound. Can I water it with you? my six-year-old asked.
Some stems died alone, others in clumps. Some mornings I’d discover that entire patches had broken off in an act of doomed secession. Each loss a failure: silence from a hiring committee, rejection from a conference, criticism from my thesis advisor. I started spacing out while reading your chapter, he said. They really gave you a raw deal, the therapist would say.
Was there enough sunlight? Too much? I placed it on the side table next to the microwave. Another clump shriveled away. I pushed toys off a shelf in the sunroom and sat it there. The soil around the edges cracked and dried. I moved it to the center of the dining room table. I’d see it whenever my eyes strayed from my laptop during work. The yellows and browns were a blight, an error, a failed sentence, my blood pressure when I went in for a COVID test. Have you been diagnosed with hypertension? the nurse asked. I hadn’t. I’d been avoiding doctors for years. I already knew what they would say. I’d bought bigger clothes once, and then again. I didn’t need to quantify breathless trips up staircases and furtive glances in mirrors. I didn’t control my schedule; I was on company time. After lunch, I’d have to get through hours of meetings, finish budgets, complete at least 10 items on my to-do list or fall behind. I needed a full meal to get through the afternoon, then a snack, and then another. You’ll get sick to your stomach, my dad said.
The moss is supposed to be the easy part! a friend said, laughing. I had asked him for help during one of my six-year-old’s playdates. I called my mom. She brought moss from her backyard the next time she visited. Leucobryum glaucum: pincushion moss. It grows in forests, it pushes up through cracks in sidewalks and roadsides, it can thrive in wet or dry conditions, I couldn’t kill it so long as it would graft onto the soil in the pot. I looked up how to encourage moss growth. Use toothpicks as tent stakes and cover the area in plastic wrap, leaving a hole for air to come in. Spray liberally. Can I water it with you? my six-year-old asked.
The leaves on the juniper tree began to wither. They bleached and turned yellow, like the moss, then fell off. Can I just throw it away? my wife asked.
I snipped off dead leaves and branches and kept spritzing. Sometimes I’d miss and water droplets would form a cough pattern on the table. It’s winter, I thought. It’s not going to do well when it’s so cold and dry. Maybe I could delay its death for a few months, until April when the rain-filled air could heal it. Maybe it needed only a new season to begin thriving. If only there were time, if it weren’t so broken, if it hadn’t missed its chance at life but could burst out of its pot and scatter kaleidoscopic growth across the table.
OK, I said. Then I made a cup of tea.
Daniel del Nido (he/him) lives in New Rochelle, NY with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in The Queens Review and the Journal of Religious Ethics. He received his doctorate in Religious Studies in 2017. When he isn’t reading, writing, parenting, or working, he enjoys cooking and drawing maps of imaginary worlds.
Analena stepped around the tangle of vines and leaves. For nearly thirty years, she’d tended this garden’s dark and fertile soil. She bent and selected a summer squash, yellow and plump, lying heavy on the earth. Its skin felt hard, ripe. She used her knife with a practiced hand to cut the fruit loose from its vine. Maybe Javi would eat this. She’d cook its flesh soft, mash it with a fork.
She pulled carrots from the garden then reached for the peas. Later, she would add these into the skillet before stirring in arroz. In the past, she would have included pork. Her husband liked meat, but chewing was difficult now. There would be enough for the hospice worker to take a plate home. He had caring eyes, and Analena appreciated the help he’d given in securing the new medical equipment for Javi.
Analena stepped toward the tomato plants and caught sight of the strange light glimmering in the indigo sky. A second sun, Betelgeuse. The dying star had appeared a few months ago, on an icy morning in May; every day since then, it rose above the horizon to lead the sun across the sky. Its cold light was as bright as the moon’s, though it lacked the lunar softness. It shone with focus and violence, an unshakeable, judgmental gaze.
Analena pulled two ripe tomatoes from their vine and placed them into the metal bowl she used to collect vegetables. A buzzing rose from the zucchini leaves, a patch of green along the wooden fence that separated her yard from the next. Analena cocked her head and listened. Kneeling on the earth, she pushed aside clutches of leaves to find a tomato had fallen and rolled there. The torn and gnawed flesh lay open and exposed. Ants probed the tear and picked away the paler parts along the circumference. The buzzing grew louder, lifting from the sick decay.
Analena peered into the tomato’s cavity at a wasp half hidden and dying there. With the dull edge of her knife, she nudged the insect, and its wings flared into an angry blur, unable to fly. Bent at its tender thorax, it slipped farther into the fleshy cavern. Analena thought about ending its suffering with a quick flick of her blade, but when its wings beat again, she didn’t have the heart to kill it.
“Hi, Ana.” A voice at the fence startled her, and she steadied herself with one hand in the dirt.
Colleen, her neighbor, peered above the wooden slats; she gave a small laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Analena grabbed the fence rail and used it to stand up. Embarrassed, she glanced at Colleen. “It’s all right. I’m just collecting vegetables for Javi’s lunch.”
Colleen disappeared for a moment, and Analena heard her place a step stool against the fence. Colleen stepped up and gazed down into Analena’s garden, scanning the rows of radishes and carrots, the vines heavy with tomatoes and runner beans.
“Your garden is coming along.”
Analena’s eyes moved over the plants. “Javi still loves the smell of fresh food cooking.”
Colleen nodded. “It’s hard to get used to, isn’t it?”
Analena glanced toward the bedroom window where her husband slept. Inside, Javi’s rattling breaths pushed back against the morning light. It was hard, watching the man she loved for forty years fade into the darkness of that room. Analena had stepped into the yard eager to work with her hands, thirsty for daylight.
“The supernova, I mean.” Colleen tilted her head toward the star. “Sometimes it feels like we’re not even on Earth anymore. Like we’re on some alien planet.”
Analena nodded. The star’s relentlessness frightened her. “I wish it wasn’t there.”
“You don’t have to be worried about it, Ana. It’s too far away to hurt us.”
“I know.” She spoke softly. Her face flushed, and she turned to look back at her tomato plants. She shouldn’t have shared her worries. Colleen had a habit of talking down to her like she was too old to make sense of the world around her. Analena watched the same news as everyone else. The scientists explained how incredibly lucky they all were to be alive during such an event. No one had seen a supernova with the naked eye since 1604; in truth, it was the vastness of those centuries spilling toward them that scared Analena more than the thought of any star exploding.
A stifling silence lay thick between the two women. Analena shifted her weight and lightly brushed an ant from her arm. Behind her, the buzz of the dying wasp rose from the leaves.
“How is Javi doing?” asked Colleen, breaking the silence.
“He’s in bed now. I called hospice last Monday.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ana. Javi’s a good man. I feel bad that Jerry and I haven’t been able to visit more. We had to move my mother into assisted living, and Jerry’s been picking up extra hours at work.” She gave a light laugh. “Life’s a bit hectic in our house these days.”
“It’s all right, Colleen. Thank you for thinking of us.”
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the house? It’s a lot of room for just one person.”
Analena felt her breath catch in the warming air. She looked up at Betelgeuse, burning in protest of its own death. They said it was over ten million years old.
“I’m sure you could sell this place easily if that’s what you wanted. My cousin’s a realtor. I can call her when you’re ready.”
Anger flared within Analena, rising from her throat as the words burst out. She glowered up at her neighbor. “Javi’s still alive, Colleen.”
She stepped back from the garden. Her mind screamed to look away, to turn and run into the house. Instead, she fixed Colleen with an unshakable gaze. She would not crawl away and hide from this.
“Of course,” said Colleen, “but…”
“No. Javi is lying in there trying to breathe. I won’t bury him while he’s still fighting for life.”
“I’m sorry, Ana. I didn’t mean…” Colleen’s face flushed and her jaw clenched.
Analena would not look away, not this time.
Colleen glanced back toward her own house. “We’re thawing elk meat from Jerry’s hunt last fall. I know Javi likes venison. We’d like to bring some of the meat over early next week and visit him.”
Next week would be too late. She wanted to grab this woman and force her to gaze into the darkness of that bedroom, wanted her to see the sick shadows cast by that dying light in the sky. Instead, she only nodded, letting Colleen turn and slip back behind the fence.
In the tree branches above Analena, a blackbird flitted and rustled the leaves. Morning shadows were giving way to harsher sunlight. Analena stood at the edge of her garden and felt the summer creaking past her. She gazed up at Betelgeuse. Yes, she thought. Next week would be too late.
This star had existed for an eternity, watching the first sailors cross vast oceans, witnessing ancient rituals offered to long-forgotten gods. Betelgeuse had a right to burn with anger, to light up the heavens, and die with conspicuous outrage.
Living things are different, she thought. They crawl into caves and hide under leaves to die. Going to ground, her father used to say. They curl themselves around their hearts, knees to chests, as if ashamed by the brevity of their existence. Here then gone.
The wasp buzzed from the leaves behind her, a final effort to lift itself from the rotting fruit.
Javi would wake soon. She should go inside to sit beside him. But she wasn’t ready to let go of this moment. Not yet. The sun’s warmth caressed her skin, and her shadow glazed the leaves on the ground beneath her. Analena exhaled a long breath and lifted her face toward the sun, as if she might hold onto its light.
Sam W. Pisciotta is a writer and visual artist. He earned an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Colorado at Denver, and he’s a graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop. Find his fiction in publications such as Flash Fiction Online (forthcoming), Nightmare Magazine, and Asimov’s. Connect at www.silo34.com and @silo34 on Instagram, and @swpisciotta on Bluesky Social.
I touch the earth and find the ash of my mother’s hair, her breath curling into smoke, into a hymn she will never sing. The fire eats through my hands as if it knows my name as if it has waited for this moment to make a feast of my body. Everywhere I go, the animals keep my secrets. The birds stitch my grief into their wings, carrying pieces of what I can no longer hold. The snakes coil my sorrow underground, burying what I’ve begged to forget. Last night, the moon burned itself into the river, and I was there to watch it drown. Everything goes this way: the air, the body, the prayer we refuse to finish. The water cannot spit me out. It holds me as it holds the ghost of rain, turning my name into something heavy, something that sinks. I asked the water to name me, but all it gave back was silence, its voice caught in the belly of a fish long dead, long forgiven. The fire grows a mouth, and it sings my body into a psalm of smoke. I am nothing but what I’ve lost: a garden of teeth and a heart beating against the blackened wood. To live is to be buried in parts, to call each death by a different name. Here is the fire. Here is the water. Here, where the earth learns how to swallow me whole. This is what I know of living: the birds mourn another loss, the snakes keep their prayers, and the river, even in its rage, cradles me like something it forgot to destroy.
Oladosu Michael Emerald is the author of Every Little Thing That Moves and the art editor at Surging Tide. He is a digital/musical/visual artist, an actor, a photographer, and an athlete. He teaches art at the Arnheim Art Gallery to kids and adults, is an Art Instructor at the Anasa Collection Art Gallery and a volunteer art instructor at Status Dignus Child Rescue Home and Ibeere Otun Initiative, as well as a Pioneer Fellow of the Muktar Aliyu Art Residency. He is winner of the GPC poetry contest and the Spring contest, and second-runner-up in the Fireflies poetry contest. He tweets @garricologist and @garrycologist on Instagram.
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