Crow calls puncture the icy air. In the silences between—our snowshoes punching a trail behind us—we make small talk like we have practiced in class. In my pockets I tuck his facts, the siblings and cactus-spotted landscapes of his youth, the book clubs and home brewing of his present. I save them like squirrel-stashed pinecones, as if the same snow-damp air that balloons my lungs might soften his details to something digestible, something familiar.

He will no longer be my teacher. This is what he told me after the asking, in the in-between of the classroom and the hallway, blurry chalk-print hands on his trouser legs betraying the nervous fingers he gripped in stiff fists as the other students streamed past to their night shifts, to their cramped apartments. He told me two times, as if I maybe did not understand the significance, as if I am wet behind the ears. We will be breaking no rules now if I agree to go on a date with him, he said. It was touching, his earnestness. His nerves shivered across his forehead while he waited for my answer. Like he no longer was the expert of verb tenses or slippery idioms sketching strange pictures in my head. Like this time I owned the words he needed to borrow. So I rolled the bones with my yes.

It is a yes I now wish to swallow back. We cross over our own tracks, looping a noose around an unmapped patch of forest. Shadows curl blue in the hollows, darker than they were on our first pass; dusk drops suddenly here. When I point this out, he does not worry. He dismisses my suggestion that we retrace our steps, like he ignored me when I told him his snowshoes should go each on the other foot.

“Just a bit further,” he insists. “This must remind you of home.”

I watch the teeth of his snowshoes bite through the crust and flick up powder from underneath. The sun no longer sparkles the snow. Nothing of this feels like home.

The trail unfolds to a field. As we cross the meadow, our talk becomes not so small. He tells me of the woman he says stole his job at the college, of the daughter he sees every other weekend, of the voting he will not do because too many contenders are corrupt. He tells me of his friend who believes immigrants are vectors of disease and crime, that they should be rounded up, imprisoned, shipped away. “Not the ones who came here the right way, of course,” he adds. He floats these ideas to me, swiveling his head to watch them land. 

I ice my ears to them, ice my face to betray none of my thinking. It is not logical that out here, dwarfed by the expanse of white-frosted pines and white-blanket sky, he seems larger even than he did in the cramped classroom with walls the same ill green of the hospital tent, of the helicopter that plucked me from the fighting in the nick of time, of the uniforms on the men who stitched back together my skin and sent me into this familiar snow and unfamiliar syntax. A shudder—of cold, I pretend to myself—xylophones up my spine. 

At the trailless far edge of the clearing, tree shadows stretch, warning us away. I wish to heed them, but I do not suggest again that we backtrack, do not use the word lost. It would change only his mood, I think, not his mind. 

“Looks like a dog.” The print he points to is larger than my mittened hand, tipped with crisp triangle claws. Here, under drooping cedar branches, blood and feathers mark the snow. 

“Wolf,” I correct him. 

He smiles with too many teeth. “Good thing you’re with me. These woods are dangerous.” 

The commotion now flapping inside me cannot be pretended away; I cannot tell myself it is only butterflies in the stomach. I breathe to trick my heart back into rhythm, breathe to grope toward some floating hope, but all the lift has left my lungs. 

The snow crust holds a pink-stained scallop of wingtips where the bird pushed off. I know I cannot join in her escape; gravity has cracked me open and pinned down my pieces. I can only squint to the now-silent sky, wishing her safe in the deepening blue.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

My nephew Moe is hungover. Even though he’s only 17, I had him sample the product last night. That way, he knows what he’s hawking. Before he took each Troll Shot, he stroked the Troll’s long, colorful hair as if apologizing for unscrewing the top of its head and downing the liquor inside. Moe moves in slow motion, but he’s a good kid.

From behind the steering wheel, I explain All 4 Fun’s business model to Moe as he loads the final box of Troll Shots in the back of the company van. “Nostalgia sells, baby,” I say, turning the key in the ignition. Moe climbs into the passenger seat. I agreed to hire him last week when his dad, my younger brother, threatened to kick him out if he didn’t get a job after dropping out.

Moe unfolds the day’s itinerary and reads aloud the first stop, Pair-a-Dice. I mostly deliver to dive bars. Their clientele fits our demographic of both remembering these things and liking to get plastered. I pull away from the curb, the sound of whiskey sloshing inside the Trolls’ plastic bodies.

I told my brother it was an orientation when he dropped Moe off last night. I almost invited him up for a drink before I thought better of it, thought of the ensuing lecture. Instead, I flipped my punk-ass little brother off as his BMW rounded the block. 

Drunk, Moe and I talked about how I came up with the idea after seeing an old photo of his dad’s Troll village, about how his dad had built the village outside our house with tree bark during a summer in the early ‘90s, about how I’d kept the neighborhood boys from destroying it and him.

“Old meets new,” I said, bringing a Troll and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s together.

Moe crashed on my futon. I texted my brother that Moe was spending the night so we could get an early start in the morning, and he just sent back a thumbs-up. I wanted to reply with how hammered Moe had gotten, with how we’d shit-talked him the whole night. I even typed a few words before deleting them.

My little bro wasn’t always such a dick. When we were kids, he was tethered to me like a shadow. I’d sit on a lawn chair inside our parents’ old garage, and he’d show me his Trolls, would tell me what job each of them had in the village. When we got older, we even hit the bars a few times. I’d order a pitcher of Budweiser, never letting him pay his half, and we’d discuss some sports team’s chances and other pointless bullshit that wasn’t so pointless since we were together. 

Then he got a job selling insurance, started drinking red wine, started pretending he came from somewhere he didn’t. He started telling me to buy this insurance policy or invest in this mutual fund as if he knew what was best, like a little bit of money somehow made him better than me. 

After stopping at McDonald’s for a greasy cure to Moe’s hangover, I drive into Pair-a-Dice’s parking lot. On their signage, dice hang like coconuts from a faded palm tree. Inside, a few drunks are already sipping on tallboys, surrounded by license plates mounted on the walls. Moe carries in a couple boxes of Troll Shots stacked one atop the other, while I head to the back to collect our check.

I knock on the door to the back office and imagine the bar manager handing me a check with a one followed by an infinite number of zeros written on it. I imagine tearing the check in half in front of my brother to show him how much I care about money, to show him that who he’s become isn’t that special. 

Someone shouts, “Weren’t you ever taught to share?”

I rush back into the bar. One of the drunks has Moe pinned in the corner next to the ATM with one hand while he paws through a box of Troll Shots with the other. I grab the drunk by the back of his shirt and fling him to the sawdust-covered floor. The box of Troll Shots he was digging through rips open, and Trolls scatter everywhere like fleeing villagers.

“I’m here,” I say, trying to put the box back together, trying to fix what’s broken.

Moe looks at me, but I see my little brother. Old meets new, I think, and I’m back in my parents’ garage. A bully dusts himself off, staggers to his bike, and pedals away. I promise my brother I’ll always be there for him, no matter what, and I gather up the trolls, careful not to grip them by the hair.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Not prayers nor writing lines nor even palms caned bloody would be enough to discipline Savvas, the worst student of our class, Ms. Antoniou said. So she made him stand in the corner of our classroom balanced on one leg with his back turned to us, and this lasted for years.

This is the only way children like him learn to behave, Ms. Antoniou said regretfully as she sealed the classroom from the rest of the school, and the world. Seated dutifully at our desks, we watched her swallow the key.

Christmas holidays came and when it snowed outside, we made miniature snowmen on the windowsill, then saved the water in empty crayon baskets for drinking. Easter followed and a bird left us its eggs to decorate with pastel watercolors before frying them on hot metal during a sunny day. School closed for summer break, and we stayed then also, sending paper planes out to our parents, saying we hoped they had fun on their vacations to seaside villages or mountain ones, kiss our grandparents for us but, no, we can’t come with because we’re being obedient, we are good examples for bad classmates to mimic, and aren’t our parents proud of us?

They sent back postcards sometimes, if their busy schedules allowed them, until they too forgot about us like the janitor and head teacher and principal already had. And we forgot about ourselves, our former selves, growing taller, surpassing every marking on every height chart of past first graders, then that of the second and third and fourth graders, the fifth, the sixth, and then there were no charts left in this classroom to surpass. But despite our best efforts, our bodies were diligent things, they didn’t stop growing until we wondered if we would be tall enough our heads would pierce through the roof.

Years passed in clusters of hours and days and weeks. We learned arithmetic until we discovered our own math theorems; soon we could recite all our classroom’s books forward and backward, and we invented new directions of recitation until we needed no other nourishment to sustain us; we could chew inked paper and spew out answers to the universe. Early on, the other teachers had climbed rickety ladders to our barred windows to slip us food and water and other contraband, but those offerings had trickled to a stop long ago. We watched the class’s pet rabbit grow old and die, and we sucked the marrow from its skeleton, fighting over the most fragile of bones.

What else did we do?

We danced, we bickered, we married each other and made fake flower crowns out of colorful paper. And someone put a wreath on Savvas’s head too as he wobbled on his one-legged perch. We thought he might fall but he didn’t. There, on the white-chalk-dusted and pencil-shavings-strewn floor, he flamingo-balanced as we slept curled under our desks with our old backpacks as pillows.

And when Ms. Antoniou grew old and died like our pet rabbit had, we wheeled her corpse upon her teacher’s chair so that it faced the opposite corner Savvas did. This was the only gift we knew how to give him. Soon our teacher was bones and we fashioned flutes out of them. We sang, we all danced together while Savvas swayed. But no one dared talk to him, if he could still talk, and some of us thought he might not have a face at all anymore, on account of us not having seen it in so long, his features slipping away from memory. And Savvas’ crimes? His mischief, his disobedience, the reasons behind the prayers and the written lines and even the palms caned bloody, why Savvas stood in the corner on one leg facing the wall? Well.

We forgot those, too. 

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Beside me on the sofa, my daughter is playing a video game. Only her eyes and fingers move. When I ask her how her day was, she doesn’t answer. Or maybe my middle-aged ears have lost her frequency. On the screen, another version of her in a glittering lilac bodysuit is slaying skeletons and scaling cliffs. Set limits, they tell me. Keep trying to connect in the real world; she’ll come around. I’m tired of picking my battles with a trained warrior. She has the controller, but I hold the remote. I press the up arrow. Beside me, her body flickers. On the screen, her bodysuit deepens to violet. I wave at the screen; she waves back. She looks so happy. I keep pressing up up up, until beside me on the sofa, the daughter I always wanted fades away.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

If you catch a frog, eat its legs. If you’re hungry, eat the rest. It doesn’t matter how cool the frog is—its little balloon eyes, how its skin is alien green, how its neck bulges and smooths, how it chime-burps on early spring nights, how a clump of grass transmogrifies into a frog. None of that matters. Frogs are food. You can eat them raw and use the bones to make arrowheads or stilettos or gigs and get yourself more. Frogs aren’t companions, not the way say, a dog, or a cat, or a rat, or a squirrel, or a raccoon is—even if you could grab one of those, and drag it close, and cocoon it in your arms, and tuck your chin over its back, its hot heart twitching next to your chest, you would have to eat it, eventually. This is the apocalypse. You are surviving.

If you encounter manufactured goods—congratulations! If you can get into a car, you can sleep in it; if you curl up tight enough, no one will know you are there. The radiator fluid makes an effective euthanizer, always handy. The glass and gasoline are good for starting fires. The tires make sturdy sandals, and you can dress yourself in the cloth or, if you’re lucky, the leather from the seats—but don’t get used to the foam padding. It will pack down, and then you’ll miss it and be sad. If you come across something that was desirable in the before-times, be careful. Be objective. A ring may have been important once, may have been precious, even—but in the after-world, it is dead weight.

If you encounter other people, be really careful. You may have compatible skills and interests, you may want help getting shelter or provisions—you may be lonely. This is understandable. But remember: other people caused this apocalypse. If it were up to you, your plans would have worked out, people wouldn’t have suggested taking a little time or reconsidering things. But the apocalypse happened, and here you are, collapsed in this empty lot, half-submerged in a puddle, soaked with freezing dew, wearing the same clothes you’ve had on since it happened, your stomach grinding dry, a sticky grit coating your neck and chest and hair and teeth—spurned and gazing at a frog.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

I fail the antonyms quiz. One question asks if my father is absent or present. I circle both. Another asks if my mother is kind or unkind. I write, “I don’t know.”

My teacher’s eyes narrow behind her black-framed spectacles. She tosses my paper on my desk. “Your answers are not funny.”

“It’s the truth. My father is mostly absent,” I tell her.

Her nostrils flare and she snorts. “Just because he’s gone temporarily doesn’t mean he’s absent.”

---

After Appa calls to say he’ll be late returning from work, Amma says we’re going to Kavi Aunty’s. She asks me to wear the purple-and-yellow-checked pinafore―an outfit she sewed using a magazine picture and her trusty Singer―because the lady is foreign returned. Amma also instructs me to be on my best behavior.

Aunty shows me her golden-haired, blue-eyed doll. When I pull on the string attached to her back, the doll blinks her dark lashes and sings, “I love you.” I pull-pull on the string. The doll repeats the words, again and again, until the string comes off in my hand and she doesn’t speak any more. Amma watches me through narrowed eyes, clenches and unclenches her fists. 

On our way home, she mutters through tight lips, “You were so good today. Such a well behaved girl. Of course Kavi will invite us again.”

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Some opposites are easier to understand. For up and down, our teacher puts a book on top of her desk and then on the floor. For short and tall, she makes the tallest student in the class stand next to the shortest one. She taught us the opposite of responsible is irresponsible with the story The Ant and the Grasshopper. I like that opposites are also called antonyms.

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I’m coming home after returning a book at my friend’s when I see the fox―beady eyes gleaming, teeth bared in a snarl―just inside our door. 

“Amma, there’s a scary animal in our house,” I scream.

She smacks her forehead, then picks up the animal; she, who doesn’t even like our neighbor’s little Pomeranian.

In the living room, Appa’s glued to the news.

“What a wonderful gift you’ve brought your daughter,” Amma says. “A stuffed animal! Just perfect.”

Appa turns up the volume. “There’s talk of rain and floods,” he says. “They say this one will be big. I must go to my mother’s.”

Amma walks into the kitchen, turns the faucet on full force.

Appa spends weekends helping my grandmother. He takes her shopping. He helps her find a plumber or an electrician, waits while they repair things. On Fridays, he goes to her place from work so he can take her to the bank and then stays over.

Amma rushes out of the kitchen. “Of course, you should go to your mother’s. She’s important.” She drops a pan. It clangs against the floor.

I want to ask Appa why he hasn’t learned about Amma’s opposites. But he’s listening to the news.

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Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Sara sneaks to the bathroom, washes the beer off her hands, adjusts her apron, and calls her son. She asks if he found his Easter basket. “Dad didn’t even give me one hint!” his smiling voice rings out, echoing across the tile. Ten years ago, when he was stretching her belly and the daffodils were slowly threatening to penetrate the dirt, she got up in front of her congregation and begged for forgiveness. Today, she apologizes to nobody. 

Peter is using a thermometer on burgers, something he hasn’t done in years. The young ones on the line cannot stop laughing about it. Peter had woken up at three that morning to smoke the ham, and, despite her tie-dye hoodies and John Lennon posters, was completely flabbergasted to find his daughter up too, slouched on the front porch with a joint and a Fanta. So, there they were, one up too early and one up too late, both there to smoke, neither of them saying what they wanted to say. 

Laila stripped in her car, throwing off her dress and tying up her hair, racing time and humming that Alleluia, Christ has risen today. When she gets to work, a pastor that lives in a 2 million dollar house looks at her with eyes somewhere between the scornful ones that stared at Sara from the pews and the glazed ones of Peter’s daughter. It is as if Laila has sinned in every plate she serves, in every cup she fills. The pastor tips her 10%. 

In the back of house, where the hordes of after-church-diners can’t reach them, the servers have prepared a feast. There are casseroles that were assembled after close the night before, cakes soggy with melted frosting that didn’t have time to cool, and enough deviled eggs to feed a small militia. 

As they scarf down bits between running food, between wiping tables, between stirring sauces, they laugh and praise and forget, for just a moment, that everyone hates them for working Easter Sunday. Sara tells Laila why this is the one day a year she doesn’t mind leaving her son to work. Peter eats a piece of cake before sneaking a piece into a to-go box for his daughter. Mike, the dishwasher, catches him and says nothing. 

Janey, who never messes up anything, accidentally doubles three separate tickets. “I must need new glasses!” she says with a wink as she walks out from behind the line and plops buffalo wings next to an assortment of cookies. 

For these people, today is a celebration. Today is a gathering. Today is a communion. 

Today they are serving others, today they are late on their rent, today their daughters are smoking weed and their tables aren’t tipping and their babies are opening baskets without them. But today, Easter Sunday, they share a holy understanding. Today, they are all indisputably aware that they are not alone, and that they have each other.

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Header photograph by Holly Pelesky
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Fifty naked women are marching down Fourteenth Street. Their bodies are a symphony, rounded like cellos or sleek and silver as flutes. Their chant is a chorus, rising to crescendo, their voices cured in oak. Through intersections and insults, over cigarette butts and tossed paper cups of cold coffee, the women swerve, swoop, resettle, a flock of starlings.

From the sidewalk, a man in a pinstripe suit and a starched cotton shirt is filming the march. He traps the women’s images for the same reasons he once trapped hibernating cicadas in a pickle jar: to rip them from context, to expose their hideous angles and ungainly bumps to his followers.

In her cubicle, the man’s assistant is watching the video. The naked women are a stand of trees, dappled and leafed, reforesting the gray city blocks. She wonders what it would be like to wear her skin like the women do, like it is a pinstripe suit or a starched cotton shirt. What it would be like to care about something so much that she would march her clotted thighs and the inked name of her dead mother past a man like her boss, knowing this presentation of herself and her nerve will make him want to fuck her and kill her in equal parts. Doing it anyway.

The march is rolling south, but before their bodies leave the camera’s view, she sees a woman lift her long, gray braid from where it hangs down her back. She flings it upward like it is a string on a kite, like it might catch the wind and send her sailing through sky.

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Header photograph by Holly Pelesky
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

it was just a fling, we tell ourselves as our brains ramp up and spiral down, our hearts shooting blood through our veins, racing past our hyperventilating diaphragms to our toes and back around to our heads, and we can’t believe our bodies can feel so high and so low at the same time—telling ourselves they won’t call or text or send smoke signals no matter how much we stare at our phones or out our windows, hoping for some hidden message in puffed clouds

but all we see are a scattering of dead black flies on our windowsills, and we want to join them: our legs up in the air, our bodies, empty husks, drained of fluid and need.

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Header photograph by Holly Pelesky
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson