Fiction

When I think about my grandpa being young, my head starts to hurt. To me, he had always been the elderly man who, with all his wisdom, taught me Chinese Chess, ate tart orange papayas, and called my brother and me xiao jiao huo, little fellows. I was aware that his life had been far more extensive, but to me it didn’t seem real. The depth, veracity, and reality of his existence didn’t seem real until I watched a slideshow depicting it, the one made for his funeral.

I saw pictures of him working on a train in Taiwan, homeless and alone. At first, the black and white palette cast a hollow shadow over his early life. It reminded me of those pictures in history textbooks, the ones that make you wonder how anyone could have lived “back then,” how happiness could have penetrated that colorless landscape. But then I saw that there were always other people sharing the same shabby work clothes, the same weary frowns, the same determination to fend off misery and loneliness. They didn’t appear in the slideshow, but I imagined laughter forming an umbrella against sweat, of friendship filling the edges of that colorless world.

Fast forward, and the pictures exchanged black and white for color, grim and grime for grins, ambition for success. In these pictures, he was shaking hands with important people, giving important lectures, attending important events. But these made me uncomfortable too. It was hard to rationalize the photographic evidence of my grandpa’s importance because he had always just been my grandfather, a part of my personal life removed from the outside world. But his impact on others was undeniable.

It filled me with joy and melancholy to see the pictures of him and my grandma, newly married. I didn’t think he could smile so widely, with the corners of his lips touching the edges of the picture frame. I didn’t think his world could twist in on him and turn upside-down the way it does when one is in love. But it must have. That’s how love works.

And then there were the pictures where he held my dad, still a boy. I didn’t know my dad could be a boy. I didn’t know he could gather his legs in someone’s lap, tiny hands reaching toward imagination, twinkling eyes scanning the future. But there he was, ready to leap out the screen. Seeing that version of him made me realize that, even though my dad called him yeye, Grandpa, in front of me, he had really been to my dad like my dad was to me. It was terrifying, the realization that my father had just lost his dad.

But the pictures that frightened me the most were the ones at the end, the ones where I was in the frame, dated only a few years back. Because everything had been fine then. Because he had still been here, and I had not cherished it enough.

 

 

 

 

Chris Tai is currently a freshman studying Computer Science and Creative Writing at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. He writes in order to reflect on his emotions and experiences, and he wrote Different Countries, Same World in honor of his late grandfather. His favorite genres to write are fantasy and romance, but he also enjoys writing about coming of age.

The buzzing was quiet at first, just a low hum beneath the sounds of solemn hymns that barely registered to almost anyone—a seven-year-old at the front fidgeting with their black suit jacket and looking over their shoulder was the only sign that something had changed. The sea of black suits and dresses all sat down and quieted, but the dull drone remained, and some started looking skeptically at each other. None knew the source of the sound, and as it continued, it seemed to fade into the background, the service continuing with a eulogy by the deceased’s wife or possibly sister. I couldn’t really say much about the deceased’s family, having only known them from the local farmer’s market, and the words the woman spoke seemed to blend into the hum that, though in the background, had been growing persistently louder.

When the woman stopped speaking and tears formed on her face, the buzzing suddenly grew to a roar in volume, as the doors at the back of the small church pushed open and every head turned to see a blurry shadowy figure taking a seat at the back of the church. It took a second glance to figure it out, but it was clear what the figure was—a swarm of bees, so tightly pressed together as to barely be able to discern any individual bee from another and shaped into the form of a person nearly six feet tall. And yet knowing this to be wholly impossible and everything I was seeing to be wrong, somehow in that moment it made sense—of course the bees would come to the funeral. They did always sell honey at the farmer’s market. The bees were as big a part of their life as anyone else.

And it seemed as though everyone else had drawn a similar conclusion. No one screamed or ran or even commented on the matter, but instead after seeing the shadowy swarm take their seat, everyone seemed satisfied knowing where the drone was coming from and turned back to the front of the chapel where a priest was standing, preparing to say some final words before another hymn was sung and the service drew to a close, all with the loud buzz continuing from the back of the room.

When the funeral had concluded, I watched as people began to make their way to the woman who’d given the eulogy to offer their condolences and didn’t even have a second thought when the shadowy figure approached her. They said no words, but simply remained in front of her with their continuous hum and reshaped what functioned as arms into a hug around the woman, who seemed to appreciate the act. After the dark, buzzing figure released her from their embrace, they walked to the casket, and looked upon the deceased before walking back out of the building and reshaping into a traditional swarm.

I approached the casket to look at the person I’d known for years and looked down at the weary body below. The body had been cleaned up and placed in a nice suit and made to be very pristine. However, even the makeup applied after death didn’t quite cover up the mark from the stinger’s entry above their eye. I’d always told them beekeeping was a risk for someone with such a severe allergy; truly a shame to be proven right this time.

 

 

Rachel Keener is a twenty-one-year-old college graduate living in Texas who loves to write and does it as much as they can. They write a variety of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in their spare time.

ABSTRACT
In this report, we aim to prove the existence of God.
PROCEDURE
You loved coin tosses. To you, coin tosses always felt like fate flipping down onto the table, or destiny dropping with a musical plink. Every game, every argument, every yes or no question was settled with a coin toss. Let a coin decide, you would always say, pale hand grasping shiny silver; warm skin against slick, cool, thoughtless metal. Quarters worked the best, but you liked the look of pennies twirling through the air, like coppery fire spiraling down. A sign from heaven if the toss went your way, from hell if it didn’t.

DATA
You learned about heaven and hell (the Christian versions, at least) late into your life. Born-again Christian is what they called you at Mt. Olive’s church, the little white building on the corner of Holiday and Whitney you started visiting Sundays at 9:30 A.M. There, you learned that heaven was glamorous, beautiful like the stained glass windows, harmonious like the cascading hallelujahs of the church choir, and you gladly knelt at the feet of the wooden pews, breathing in the dust of the red hymnal books. You learned to fear hell, to grasp tightly instead on to faith, fate, and blind belief; religion gripped your bones and made your heart pound and your blood rush with singular purpose. It was a faith that even when tested, made you believe in destiny, in some kind of peaceful closure and of course, in sweet, sweet, salvation.

But before you were a born-again Christian, you were a physicist by trade, a child prodigy who scored near perfect on the national college entrance exams for physics. In college, you learned about Lagrangian numbers and the laws of kinematics––the simple classical mechanics that governed the physics of coin tosses. You knew, better than most, that there was nothing unpredictable about coin tosses, no way that heaven or higher powers would or could or should intervene. You knew the moment the coin left your hand, physics had already mapped its journey––a coin, destined to land on heads because of a cross breeze the moment you flicked it off your thumb, or on tails because of the extra weight of copper in its grooves. In physics, there was no such thing as fate, no such thing as faith or signs from heaven, only the raw data of the laboratory.

ANALYSIS
But even though the data was clearly laid out in the yellowed pages of your textbooks, you were never satisfied with the loops of logic that seemed so contrived compared to the effortless beauty of the world. And though you knew how Lagrangian numbers worked (Taylor series, and don’t forget the error term!) to calculate the effects of a cross breeze on coin tosses, you always asked yourself, who blew the cross breeze? and for that, there was no answer in the textbook.

In a quantum theory class you took your senior year of college, you thought you found the answer. In quantum theory, there is always a small chance of atom entanglement, where atoms will disobey the laws of classical mechanics, and thus, your coin toss would be unpredictable. The questions that I strived to solve but never could, the quantum theorists answered with the God of the Unknown, a being who was in control of everything that wasn’t explained or couldn’t be controlled by the laws in a physics textbook.

Years later, you ran into the God of the Unknown where you least expected Him––far from the sterile white walls and linoleum floors of laboratories and libraries, but in between the embossed black covers of the Bible you got from Mt. Olive’s annual Easter service. This time, though, as you sat in the wooden pews, you didn’t call him God of the Unknown; you called Him your Lord and Savior.

CONCLUSION
You’ve proven God because you’ve chosen to believe and trust in Him. Coin tosses are your metaphor, the very closest thing you have to representing Him. Both God and coin tosses decide your fate, both are a delicate balance between the unknown and known, both can follow physics or defy it (after all, didn’t God himself create the laws of physics in order to create light on the first day and the Earth on the second?).

Like it says on the coin––in God we trust, indeed.

Connie Cai graduated from Harvard College in May with a degree in Biochemistry, and a minor in Education. She’s currently a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, where she teaches English and writes personal essays and fiction in her spare time.

Cars began to file out of the driveway and the house grew quiet again. The cries and the mumbled condolences had filtered out the front doors, leaving a silent reminder of what had occurred that day. Although Nancy had only been Rose’s stepmother, she still missed the woman dearly.

During the funeral Rose had stayed with her half-brother, Charlie. At just two years old, he did not yet understand his mother would not be coming back. Charlie had a strong grip on Rose’s black silk dress as he dragged her through endless hallways lined with frames.

Pictures of her father’s family.

Photographs from Charlie’s first birthday in the summer of 1931.

Portraits of Nancy in her wedding dress.

She felt she was intruding just by looking at them.

After passing Charlie off to an uncle, she made her way to the garden behind the house. The land was cut down the middle by a single walkway which wrapped around a great fountain of stone lined with white marble. Rows of tulips of every color blossomed before her eyes. It was easy to see why it had been one of Nancy’s favorite places.

Looking to her right, she found her father sitting on the bench against the garden wall having a cigarette. She stood silently at the double doors and took note of just how different he looked since she had last seen him. Rose had kept in touch with Nancy through letters and the occasional visit, but her father had faded from her life.

Though it had only been three years since Rose last saw him, the changes were drastic. His once proud stance had shriveled into a hunched form. His skin looked sickly and the bags under his eyes were as gray as the gravel below his feet. His black hair, though short, was disheveled and strands of it fell on his forehead.  When she drew closer to him, she could see that only his eyes remained the same. The ice blue was still just as cold as she had always known them to be.

“When mom died, it was just Aunt Lizzie and I that went to the funeral. The rest of you were fighting in the war. It was odd,” Rose said as she took a seat beside him on the stone bench.

“I thought you left with Lizzie.” He didn’t spare her a glance, only throwing the cigarette to the ground before looking out to the garden his wife had loved.

“I was playing with Charlie.”

She didn’t want to make the interaction longer than it had to be and there was only one reason she had gone to him.

“Here.” She handed him the package from her purse.

“What is this?” He held the brown parcel but didn’t open it.

“Nancy found Mom’s wedding ring and gave it to me.”

“It wasn’t hers to give,” he said as he pocketed the ring into his jacket.

“She thought I should have it.”

“Why are you giving it back to me? So I can give it to you properly?” There was a sliver of amusement laced in his voice.

She scoffed and said, “I have very low expectations of you as a person, James, let alone as my father.”

He seemed unmoved by the insult.

“I came to pay my condolences,” Rose continued. She wrapped her jacket tightly around her as the wind picked up.

“That’s what funerals are for.”

“I meant to you. I lost both of my parents. Mom and Nancy. Nancy knew I loved her just as much. I’m sorry that she won’t get to see Charlie grow up.”

A minute of silence came and went before James looked at her face for the first time in what felt like forever. Rose felt a great sympathy for his suffering, but she had no love left for him. The only thing holding them together was their blood and their mutual love for those who had left them.

“He looks like you, aside from the eyes. Those are Nancy’s.” Charlie and Rose were the exact opposites in that way. She had her mother’s golden locks and pointed nose, but inherited her father’s eyes. Aunt Lizzie once said it was the only thing he had given her.

“I’ve been told.”

Their gazes broke off and settled on the sight before them. The flowers only served to remind him of his late wife. He planned to rip them from the ground that weekend, but the faint smell of tulips would still linger in the air.

“Make sure to spend time with Charlie. Keep the portraits up so he’ll remember what she looks like.”

“Are you giving me parenting advice now?”

“You would benefit from it.”

James nodded at her words before standing and saying, “I’ll have someone drive you home.”

He walked away and headed back inside. She knew that once she got home Lizzie would tell her that James tries his best, but she would sound unconvinced.

She stood and took in the beautiful garden for the last time, silently thanking Nancy. Nancy had managed to bring light to the parts of James that Rose had only seen as a kid. When the two had loved each other as a father and his child should. Nancy had managed to melt the ice in his irises into lukewarm pools.

Once she met her father at the front door, the car was waiting for her. Her father kept his gaze planted on the floor.

“I’m leaving in two days. There’s a nursing school near mom’s sister. She said I could live with her until I get my own place. I probably won’t come back.”

His response was so delayed she thought she wouldn’t get one until a whisper broke the silence.

“Forgive me.” James’s voice had taken on a vulnerable tone Rose never heard from him.

She hid her surprise behind a cold mask she had perfected from years of watching her father.

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

James cleared his throat and stood straight.

“When Mom got sick, I tried to care for her. But how much can a child do for a dying woman? I needed you there,” she inhaled sharply before laughing slightly, “the day they announced the war had ended; it was the happiest day of my life. I thought that I would finally get my father back but when you came out of that train, you barely glanced at me before walking away. I won’t forgive you for coming back.”

“I can’t change the fact that I went to war. I lost too many people in those years and your mother just ended up being one of them. What do you want me to do about that?”

“Just do what you’ve always done: nothing.”

Rose turned to look up at him before speaking. “I want you to remember this moment and pray that Charlie never feels the way I do. That he never tells you there’s no love in him when he looks at you.”

“I did the best I could for you.”

“I know you did. That’s the worst part of it.”

This time Rose was the one to walk away. She willed her eyes to remain forward, but her mind drifted to Charlie. She could only hope that his life would be filled with the happiness hers lacked.

 

Thais Jacomassi is a recent graduate from Emerson College with a Bachelor’s in Writing, Literature, and Publishing with a minor in History. She is an award winning author as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been featured in various literary magazines including The Emerson Review, Concrete Literary Magazine, and The Echo Literary Magazine.

It is mid-day. The sun is high and ablaze with a cloying brilliance. I watch as it treks into a cluster of stratocumulus clouds and mollifies. Time is crawling a tad too slowly as I await Ejike, my little brother, my back against the side of a nearby candy truck. To pass the time, I duck into a rundown eatery and greet the people inside absentmindedly. There are two middle-aged men seated leisurely on a bench on the far side, near Iya Franceska, who is rinsing off an exhausted enamel plate. I take a seat near the doorway and the scent of melon wafts to my nose. One man starts to complain:

“Madam, be fast please, it’s almost 6pm.”

“Oo,” she calls back, “Oga Paulinus, you’ve heard the stories?”

“He has heard,” the man beside Paulinus says, laughing, “I think he’s afraid even—”

“Tah!” Paulinus interjects, “I’m not afraid of anything in this life.” He puffs his voice to sound boastful.

It fails miserably and I scoff. I know Paulinus is just as scared as everyone else in Brass. This past week alone, there’d been fervent reports of more than a dozen sightings in Lower Enyong alone, where I knew he lived; reports that recalled the dead with startling undeniability, and called forth thoughts of Lucy. It seemed utterly bizarre that she could be back here, in this here Brass, roaming the shadows—perhaps following me, willing my mortal eyes to grasp spirit. I found myself watching my back every so often, feeling spooky eyes poking it, wishing for a half-moment that those eyes would be Lucy’s and they’d stay gazing just long enough for me to behold them when I turn.

Some people, like my father, were eternally skeptical, and perhaps rightly so. But everybody cannot be lying at the same time; certainly not Mama Amaechi, whom I saw with my own eyes. I’d been returning from school, hungry and in the grip of aimless thoughts. I saw her pivot over a small fence in frenetic flight, land, lunge and fall mercilessly onto red earth, all the while screaming the name of her dead husband,

“Ejima! Ejima!”

Wide-eyed, frozen at my deepest core, I stood and stared at the emptiness behind her, the battered shrubbery, the lone wild mango tree, and the breasts of hills in the distance. Where was Ejima? I certainly knew him when he was alive: stout, severe man who ran a clothing store at the edge of the market near Ajunta River, where the fishermen caught bonga fishes with large, encompassing cast nets. I don’t think I ever saw Ejima smile as a living person. I remember once, when his wife forced him to celebrate his fortieth birthday in front of their house on Igwe street and invited friends and neighbors. Ejima cut the cake with what looked like bitter amusement on his lips, and when the cameraman insisted he smiled a proper smile, he gave a look of bones that shut him up for the rest of the evening. I imagined Ejima as a white-garbed ghost and I felt fingers crawl up my spine; that immense sternness etherealized by a stint in the underworld, that irrevocable glare. Mama Amaechi got up and ran, on and on, towards her parent’s home two miles away at Abbah. I heard she died three days later of an illness that confounded all the medicine men  the whole of Brass.

I request a small plate of okpa, eat it quickly and exit the eatery.

Outside, I can see the market, milling about, sending up an indeterminate wall of white noise. I wonder if the sky changes color when a ghost unveils itself. If it goes from a patient blue to a menacing grey. I feel uneasy. Today, everything relates to the finger of ghosts; the flock of birds that scatter haphazardly from the top of a building in the distance, the domestic animals in wild commotion, fleeing what seems to be their shadow, the rabble I can now see forming up chaotically, knocking things down in their haste, dispersing at breakneck velocities away from the market and towards the town. I stand upright, suddenly apprehensive. It looks like a riot out there and Ejike is still amongst them. I am suddenly aware of a vast greyness in the sky when, suddenly, Ejike appears beside me, screaming.

“Brother, let’s run. Faaassst!”

I swallow hard.

“What about the vegetables, did you buy them?”

“Brother, let’s run!” he urges, raising an impatient eye to the rabble dashing towards us.

“Anh-anh,” I mutter, “what happened in the market?”

He casts me an ugly look before he breezes through the narrative. He was buying Oha under the shed where Anty Ananta sold vegetables when suddenly he saw someone he knew he shouldn’t have seen, Lucy, pricing a bunch of periwinkles beside him. It was her own mother that had spotted her and shrieked her name in befuddlement. Lucy turned and ran towards the river and the entire market erupted in chaos.

My heart stops and I want to ask Ejike which Lucy he saw – was it my Lucy? What id she wear? What did she look like? – But the rabble is already too close and Ejike turns to flee.

Amidst the blood-curdling fear, I nurse a thought. Even after 3 years, I can remember fervently her face, her supple eyes and ebony skin, the peculiar shade of milk that was her nails. Love does that to you, and Lucy and I had been embroiled in it like pigs rolling in mud before she left me. The fleeing mob speeds past me mercilessly and I jump aside to let them trample past, all their screams, and fear, crystallizes a question: what if this is the only chance I ever get to see her again?

When I begin hasting my way towards Ajunta River, I recognize I am little more than a profoundly stupid man. But I cannot help myself.

 

 

Divine Inyang Titus is a writer, performance poet, and songwriter keen on exploring the nuances of the human experience through art. He is the winner of the STCW Future Folklore Climate Fiction Contest, 2021 and author of the chapbook “A Beautiful Place To Be Born”. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, The Parliament Literary Journal, The Puritan Literary Magazine, The Hearth Mag, The Shallow Tales Review, The Kalahari Review and elsewhere. He deeply enjoys reading, making music, and observing the rudiments of excellence.

One Day
I unwrap the heirloom china, stacking each plate nervously one on top of the other. You rearrange the couches into infinite configurations, repeatedly stopping to place your hands on your hips, determining if it lives up to what you pictured in your head.

I guess I didn’t realize how much work this would be, you say to the air.

Me neither, but I think we’re doing okay, I reply.

You turn back and smile at me, and I hope you can’t tell how cold my feet are–– how scared I am that this is all too serious and too sudden. I wonder if I am like the furniture–– do I keep falling short of who you expected me to be? What parts of us need to be reorganized, rethought?

I’m not being mindful of what I’m doing and drop a plate. Despite hitting the tile, it somehow stays intact. You laugh and tell me to be careful.

 

One Week

            Hey, do you know where the address book is? I need to ship a couple things back home to my sister, you throw over your shoulder while opening up the last few boxes aimlessly.

You mix home into your sentences so slyly, like a mother putting cough syrup in juice. It emphasizes that this is not home. Maybe it never will be. You’ve been saying things like this since we loaded up the car. And of course I have no godforsaken idea where it is! I am dating someone who puts tea towels in the same box as loose hangers and old postcards and drink coasters!

I sigh and say No, I’m sorry, but what I really mean is It’s long gone by now.

One Fight

            You hold the dustpan while I sweep up broken dishes.
You wipe my tears and say sorry, but we both know none of this is your fault.

 

One Month

            We get a cat to keep us company, but I also believe it’s a last ditch effort to keep us together. The couch has quickly been lost under a sea of blankets and pillows. Is that why you wanted so badly for the living room to look perfect? Because you knew you’d end up sleeping in here most nights?

I’m not mad at you, baby, you just keep tossing and turning at night. I go into work exhausted. This makes sense–– we haven’t fought in weeks, but it’s just like me to assume a goodbye will come out of nowhere.

One night, I fall asleep watching cartoons in bed–– a childish habit of mine–– then wake up at 2 a.m. to the smell of ramen on the stove. Shrimp. I can smell it through the door. I walk out and sit on the counter, where you already have two bowls pulled from the cabinet. It feels like there’s a wall between us, for we cannot seem to meet eyes.

You hate shrimp, I say blowing on my noodles.

Yeah, you slurp.

We decide to name the cat Billy Pilgrim–– because you love science fiction, and because I keep praying for a way to travel back in time.

One Season

            The coat closet is bloated with tweed blazers and parkas and wool scarves. We could do an entire load of laundry of just the fuzzy socks we’ve collected to layer under heavy boots.

Standing in front of the apartment door, you button up my puffer coat and kiss my forehead, while I brace myself for the blustering wind. We both grew up in the cold, but I left it so long ago it’s been hard to come back. You tell me, You’ll adjust to it! It’s gonna be so beautiful in the winter, you remember!, and I try so hard to believe you.

I think back to being a kid–– when my family would rake rainbow leaves into piles on the front lawn. My mother would hold my hand, and we would jump in together, like diving into a pool with a partner when you’re too scared to go alone.

But things are different now. You and I squeeze into the car and go around, raking the multi-colored corpses into black garbage bags. The couples who live in these houses are old and rich and white. The men look at you funny. Their wives shoot me big doe eyes. And they pay us chump change compared to what they can afford.

Maybe it was a mistake to move here. Maybe as the seasons change so will our feelings. When we get home, I cannot tell if you are angry that I am the only person in this city you know, or if you’re just frustrated that it’s late October, and you already need mittens.

 

One Holiday

            My family is afraid of things they cannot quite place, and from far away you look like a mirage to them. Grandfather keeps asking you where you’re from, and when you say New Jersey, same as you, sir, he doesn’t believe it. You squeeze my hand under the table everytime they say something sexist, and I squeeze yours when they say something racist. We make a little game of it, until my cousin starts flipping through the television, stops on a K-drama, and asks you to translate. I’m Burmese, you whisper. This time, you’re the one squeezing my hand.

When we get home, Billy Pilgrim has run away. You’d been smoking out the window and left it open. Maybe he’s on Tralfamadore?, you ask jokingly. As mad as I am, I cannot help but giggle through the tears.

We pile leftovers from my grandparents’ on a plate. While you work on a ‘missing’ poster, I take turns feeding myself, then feeding you.

 

One Semester

Rent is now divided 60/40, but we both know it will quickly become 70/30. The assistantship stipend doesn’t cover much, and although you seem happy and proud to support me, I’m afraid you’re secretly resentful. So while you’re at work, I spend the early mornings pacing around the apartment, biting my nails, and searching through odd-job postings online until I have to head to class. Everything would be different if I wasn’t so shy, so afraid to tell you how inadequate I feel.

How easily frustrated I get at myself.

How ashamed I am for getting easily frustrated at you.

It is a Friday night–– one of the few nights our schedules don’t conflict anymore–– and as we are leaving the apartment to go downtown, Billy is on the doorstep. He looks starved. It’s not too late for him, but I wonder if it is for us.

I hold him close and whisper, what did you see when you came unstuck in time?, and he sinks his claws into my blouse.

One Birthday

You take the china from the cabinet and cut the coconut cake into large pieces. I get shy about getting older, as if I am undeserving of whatever new responsibilities and experiences come with aging. As if all I am at twenty-three is all I’ll ever be.

We get full and take a nap on the couch. When we wake, you hand me an envelope. Inside there is a piece of paper. It says Peru. I kiss you until my lips are numb and bruised–– until I convince myself that twenty-four really will be different.

 

One Summer

            We never take the trip.

 

One Year

            There is a plane ticket on the counter when I come home from class. An overstuffed  suitcase seems to swallow the small foyer it sits in. It looks like you’re taking everything with you. Except for me. I am too afraid to ask when you’re coming back, because I know when I say when, what I really mean is if, and you’ll see right through me.

You say, I love you, when you leave.

And I wash the dishes alone.

 

 

Abigail Wells, 20, was raised in Arizona’s East Valley and is a senior at Middle Tennessee State University, where she studies English literature. She has been published in Collage Magazine, Off Center Magazine, Outrageous Fortune, and Girls Right the World international literary journal. Wells was a selected poetry finalist representing MTSU for the 2021 Southern Literary Festival and is an essay and poetry finalist this year. She was a recipient of the 2021 Richard C. & Virginia Peck Award for her creative writing.