The bus creaks into the stop beside the river. The big blue warehouse buildings. Lemon sky to the left over Patrick Street. No matter what season I go here Cork City always feels hazy and lazy, like some seaside holiday place. Some humidity in the air that’s not there in Dublin. Further South I guess although I can’t see that affecting climate at such a level.

It reminds me of nauseous car journeys when I was a kid, the long brown shape of Dunnes Stores on the river out the window. Visiting Margaret and Billy and getting the spare room, the one that was Margaret’s office with all the chiropractor stuff in it. The glass jar of green liquid with the pointy crystal top, the heavy textbooks, the chair in it with the hole for your face. Me and my Mam and my Dad all had to sleep in the same room and I’d wake up much earlier than them, counting to five hundred because I was so excited and bored. I loved sleeping on the floor on the airbed with its sudden funny movements, its farty noises.

I’m meeting Ana at the bus stop over the bridge, outside Brown Thomas. I ate all six of my rice cakes on the bus even though I don’t really think I was hungry. I’m just exhausted. I slept badly. I have that indiscriminate feeling of run-down wanting that I’m never sure is hunger or thirst.

I’m early. I walk up and down Patrick Street for a while, looking in glossy shop fronts. Weirdly like a French street or something in this kind of brittle sun. It hits me that I feel really ill. My eyes doing this funny thing, like everything’s too bright. The pavement is made of these light grey flagstones that look impossibly smooth and clean like we’re indoors. I’m halfway down Patrick Street and I suddenly feel like I can’t get a handle on the depth of anything around me, like the ground is coming up to meet me even though I’m still standing up.

I sit back down at the bus stop where I’m meant to wait for Ana. The feeling is starting to subside a bit but now I’m just anxious trying to monitor it, looking around me and seeing whether the world is doing that swelling thing again. That’s what it was. Like the ground was swelling.

I have anxiety but I’ve never properly had panic attacks. I had something close to one once, after I’d seen some movie that had scared me when I was about nine. I was in the back of my Mam’s car and I suddenly felt like everything was going too fast around me. Looking out the windows was making me sick so I had to squish myself between the two front seats and look at the road head-on as it hurtled towards us. I got that for years on and off, that feeling when you’re in a car and you suddenly realize how fast you’re going, everything blurring as it melts past you outside.

I realize there are some Facebook messages from you that I haven’t seen yet.

So you’re just going there for like a day

                            Yeah just for this festival yoke with Ana

Long way to go to hang out with a friend

                           Ah yeah haven’t seen her in ages though

Well let me know when you’re back

                           Yup! Will do

Because I thought we’d arranged to meet tomorrow

                           Yeah I’ll be back tomorrow! Still on for that if you are

Yeah I’ll be free 2pm or so

                           Oh sorry, is evening okay? I thought we’d said evening!

No I don’t think we said evening

                           Oh ok. Probs won’t be back until evening because buses

 Right. Let me know

                           Will do! I should be home 5 or so! Can meet you in town?

Well that’s a lot later than we’d said but ok

                           Aw I’m really sorry, v all over the place at the moment!

Yeah. Don’t you have something to go to

                           Nope just waiting for Ana to arrive!

Right

                           Are you ok? Sorry again ❤

Yes, why

                  Nothing you just seem upset! Bad at telling in messages though

I’m not upset        

                  Good! I am glad. How’s your day going?

Okay I guess why

                  Idk no real reason just chattin : )

Why are you still messaging me on here

                  Ok I can stop if you want? I just thought you were upset or something.

I’ve said I’m not

                  Okay, sorry!

Go meet your friend

The only thing I have in my bag, food or beverage wise, is some dark chocolate. I break off a square and eat it. It doesn’t make me feel any better.                    

I’m so relieved to be around Ana and her sister. Their muddy hiking boots and fleeces. Arguing gently about what groceries they should buy and bring, who’ll carry the bread and who’ll carry the houmous. I feel awkward intervening in anything as a guest, so I’m getting to drift around smiling gratefully. I guess I’m also glad her sister’s there because it means we don’t have to talk about private stuff.

The festival hasn’t really started yet. It’s only afternoon, and I get the impression that even when it’s going full swing it will be pretty chill. There are families with kids in their baggy pantaloons, the West Cork lot. The girls have gone to find loo’s and I’m there underneath a music tent where a band are tuning up, quiet fizzles of noise from the amps. The ground is muddy and pockmarked with footsteps here. The walls of the tent navy blue and the feeling again that my eyes are having trouble adjusting. It’s dark inside the tent and the flashes of drizzly sky visible at the sides too white. The ground stretches out around me too close to my face even though I’m standing it’s horrible.

‘Hey.’ Ana claps me between the shoulder blades and I jump. ‘We’re going to go for a walk since nothing’s started.’

The road plunges into damp woods. It’s the kind of country road with deep trenches of mud on either side of it, tire-sized, and a strip of grass down the middle like a widow’s-peak tuft on a bald guy’s head. Fairy lights strung up in between the telegraph poles. It’s still too bright – the sky that overcast searing white – so the fairy lights are only faint. Spots of colour that pulsate and fade, the hearts of tiny ghosts.

The woods peter out and we’re in a valley, grassy slopes either side. There are some hikers pottering around in their slick damp anoraks with their ski poles. I hear German spoken. There is a slab of stone in the middle of the valley, coffin-shaped. A disheveled man comes up to us. Eyes piercing blue.

‘This place,’ he says, unprompted. ‘This is one of those important places.’

 We look at each other nervously, and he goes on, although we haven’t asked.

‘All the energy gathers here,’ he says. ‘You become aware, and you become aware you’re aware.’

 Ana and her sister sort of smile politely at him. Some tourists – rosy cheeked girls with skiens of flaxen hair coming loose from their hoods – are taking selfies with the stone. The thing seems to be to lie down on it. Some sort of meditation thing.

We take turns. I sit down on it after the others have had their go. It’s narrow, like an ironing board, and I’m worried I’ll roll off the side. Damp and I’m not wearing anything waterproof. It hurts my shoulder blades when I lie down, the sharp, the cold. I focus on what I can see, like it’s the opening shot of a film. The sky blank white, the grass verges of the valley on either side if I tilt my head. I lie there for a while, trying to feel something, not feeling anything. Just bits of drizzle as they spiral and stick to my cheeks, and the agitated feeling that I want to look at my phone.

Last Wednesday, my friend Craig was coming up from Belfast. We were going to go to the Pav that evening. I hadn’t seen him in months, so this was a big deal. I told you on the phone that I was going to meet a friend, since you and I had had also planned to meet up at some point that day. You got weird. I can’t really remember what you said that made me think you were annoyed, but I definitely felt like you were annoyed. I’m not sure why. He’s gay, and you know he’s gay, so it wasn’t that kind of thing. But it was something.

I only ended up meeting him for an hour in the end. I got worried about you thinking I was flaky, felt mean, wanted to do both things. I drank a pint too quickly, Devil’s Bit cider with syrupy blackcurrant pooling down the bottom. Sitting there indoors in the Pav because of the sun showers, light streaming in across the wooden floorboards. The place empty enough, everyone in there crowded around the screen in the top corner shouting at the rugby. Too loud for Craig and I to hear each other. We hadn’t talked much in ages, so we didn’t really get down to the discussions. Almost too much to update each other on.

Walking out into the sun across the cricket pitch, slightly sleepy now from the drink, shake myself, shaky vision. Out across the cobblestones to meet you at Front Arch. I saw you when I was still in the shadows coming out, you were sitting on the railings outside. Neck craned brow furrowed looking for me from the other direction looking annoyed and I suddenly wanted to walk backwards and hide. You saying I was ten minutes late. It was okay in the end, we went to the park and sat by the waterfall, wasn’t that bad.

When you left there was something about the blueness of everything in Dublin as all the light left the city and I just shuddered a bit. For some reason into a corner shop for a shoulder of Huzzar. On that ambiguous stretch of road near Busáras when I realized I’d forgotten the juice. I never spend that much time inside Busáras really. The bright expanse of floor. The glow of the vending machines lit up in the window. I bought a bottle of Tropicana and poured the vodka in when I got to Connolly station, got on a dart out to my parents house and drank it on the way. Gentle sway of the dart. You are getting sleepier and sleepier.

There’s a note in my phone that says tell Ana everything. I can date it to somewhere between Raheny and Kilbarrack when my belly was getting warm and I was starting to feel pleasant and expansive about the world. That first blush of drink going through you when all the solutions seem simple. In future I’m going to just. Why do I never just. Seems stupid the next day when you remember all your reasons for keeping the peace.

When I got in that evening my Mam slagged me for seeming tipsy, said my pint with Craig must have turned into a good few altogether. I’d practically forgotten I’d met up with him earlier, seemed like ages ago. I realized I could pretend that was what happened. Finally back after a long catch-up. I microwaved some food and sat at the table, turned happy-drunk.

‘Aware yet?’

They’re waggling hands in front of my face. I sit up, wipe the drizzle off my glasses, twisting them against a corner of my t-shirt.

‘What? Oh yeah. Learnt all the secrets of the universe. Totally enlightened.’

Alicia Byrne Keane is a spoken word poet from Dublin. She features regularly at poetry nights around Ireland and the UK, performing at festivals such as Body & Soul, Castlepalooza and Electric Picnic. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Headstuff, Bare Hands, Increature, and FLARE 03. She has one collection of poems, titled ‘We Could Be In The Sky.

I stare at the row of rails below, waiting for the familiar rumble to come through the tunnel, the sound of another hollow day beginning. The pin on my nametag has worn loose, causing the badge to lie askew on my chest with my photo at a slant, as if perpetually asking a question. Only now do I realize my name is misspelled. I want to ask myself, indignantly, how none of my coworkers could have noticed, but the truth is no one has spoken to me long enough to notice.

The Metro arrives. Impatient passengers thrust onto the train the moment the doors open, shouldering through those getting off like they’re stalks in a cornfield. Those departing push just as forcefully, banging bags into elbows and suitcases into knees. I wait, letting them sift around me. It’s exactly like the rest of my life. I am a colander. People run through me.

All the seats are taken when I squeeze on. I grab a pole and the Metro tunnels through the earth the same as ever. Some occupants read newspapers, or books, or their laptops, the same as they always do. Some stare blankly at feet. A few talk, but most are quiet.

Everything is the same as it is every day.

That is until a woman, younger than me, in a baggy coat with oily hair, sitting a few chairs diagonally across, begins to cry.

I notice it just as it’s about to happen. Her lip does its first subtle quiver. Then her chin scrunches, as if a giant sculptor had thumbed the soft clay of her features. Now the sculptor balls up her entire face. She lets out a small sound. Then she is full-blown weeping right here on the Metro in front of everyone.

We ignore it.

The elderly man on her left clears his throat and stands. No hurry, like he wanted to all along. He shuffles over to a map on the wall. The teenaged girl on her right wanders over to a pole, hooks an arm around it without looking up as she jabs at her phone. No one else reacts to the incident occurring diagonally across from me. They squirm a little, cough, but otherwise continue with their iPods and paperbacks.

I don’t blame them. It’s embarrassing, watching her twist up her face like that, cry those fat tears like that. What a scene she’s making, as if I don’t have problems too. Doesn’t she know where she is? Doesn’t she know everyone can see? Doesn’t she care?

She doesn’t, and I hate her for it.

Over the years I have lost this ability to cry, like one loses baby teeth or the color of their hair or the density of their bones. Osteoporosis of the soul.

It’s not like I haven’t tried. When my mother finally succumbed to that long, hard sickness, I sat in the front pew at the funeral and knew I was supposed to do it. Show some kind of feeling. I had it, but the tears wouldn’t come. I pushed and pushed like trying to turn myself inside out, but the tears wouldn’t come.

This woman’s tears flood out of her effortlessly while my fists tighten at the ends of my too-short sleeves. I hate her for this shameless display. I hate her for this lack of self-consciousness. I hate her for this freedom.

One time I watched a movie about a dog. The owner had hit the dog with his car by mistake. Was hugging its neck and sobbing. I watched that part again, captivated by the actor’s face. All the contortions, like a worm shriveling in the sun. I watched it several times and then went to the bathroom mirror to copy the actor. Maybe if I got the procedure right, then everything I had pent up inside me would find its way out. But all that happened was I looked like I was taking a big shit.

Constipation. That’s what it feels like. Jammed up like logs on a river. I watched a documentary about that once—those early days of transporting lumber via waterways. How when the logs jammed up, the workers would pull this or that log, and when they pulled just the right one, the whole mess would explode in a torrent of wood and water. That’s what I need. My just-right log.

The woman on the Metro carries on, until something startling happens. Another woman, with spiraling curls like a curtain of moss, walks over to the crying one. She sits beside her, wraps her arms around her. Just like that. The crying one lets out a sob, covers half of her crushed-clay face. Her body tenses at first, but soon it gives up her weight to the other, gives up and gives in. The second woman doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask what’s wrong, doesn’t say shhh or don’t cry or it’s okay. Doesn’t make any sound at all. Just holds her.

Just lets her.

She doesn’t pry for reasons. She doesn’t soothe it away, hush it down. She doesn’t try to fix it, to stop it, to judge it, to hide it. She just lets it. Lets it. Lets it.

Maybe she knows it’s not about the reason. Sometimes there is no reason. Sometimes you’re walking to the train stop or the post office or the store on the corner, and it hits you. You stumble, your balance thrown off just a bit. Your mind is pulled to it by the centripetal force like this speeding Metro. Your insides hang askew like your faulty name badge. Off-center, off-kilter, just off.

Sometimes it makes sense. It comes when you’ve caught too long a glimpse at the photo of your mother when she still had all her hair. It comes when you realize the people you work with every day still don’t talk to you long enough to notice the misspelling right there on your chest.

But other times it doesn’t make sense. It hits you when you’re laughing. When you’re having fun, or supposed to be. It hits you when you’re watching your niece on the carousel. It hits you when you’re blowing out the candles on the cake your sister made for your birthday. She and her husband and your niece are all smiling, wondering what you’ve wished for.

Maybe you tell them. I don’t. It would hurt them too much.

So no, there isn’t always a reason. But they expect one. I wish I could explain it. Please tell us, they say. Why are you sad?

I don’t know. I just am.

For the first time in my life, I am watching someone besides myself have this uncontrollable, illogical feeling, and also for the first time in my life, I am watching someone not ask why.

Maybe all this time it was okay I didn’t have an answer.

I watch the woman crying, and the other woman letting her, and I don’t hate them anymore. I am thankful for them. For her honesty. For her acceptance.

Surrendering to the motion beneath my feet, I approach the two. The crying one looks up first, cheeks wet and shiny. The other turns her head, meets my gaze through her mossy curls. I want to say something. That I understand.  That I’m grateful. But what was jammed behind my eyes is now jammed inside my throat. The words do not come. Yet the curly-haired woman seems to know. She looks at me in a way that feels deeper, vaster, more seeing than I have felt in years.

She reaches out a hand.

Just then the Metro stops, throwing me off balance. I hit a pole with my shoulder. The doors open, and in an instant I’m swept away by the mass of departing travelers. Their bulk pushes me onto the station platform. The train doors shut. I lose them.

But it’s okay.

Because today, something has happened.

My just-right log has begun to budge.

Shannon Noel Brady writes because one day she sprung a leak and stories poured out. Her work has been published in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, Jersey Devil Press, Vandercave Quarterly, and more. She can be found at snbradywriter.wordpress.com, on Twitter @snbradywriter, or up in a tree.

Image Credit:  Corey Agopian

Yes, but can you fly?

she said to be a feminist; that’s what she told me to do. i told her my femininity was a pair of old crows tied to my appendages/i told her my mouth would flood rivers with fantasy/ i told her princessmermaid ariel was strapped to my head in a series of painfully acquired hair-extensions and i told her i was already woman enough to know my womanhood. i wrapped this hood (little red’s or robin’s, or something on the spectrum between femininity and what you want me to be) around my face – i wrapped it – i wrapped it close. i felt this rapture, the wrapping-paper still paper-mached to my mother’s fingertips. i felt all the paper, the plastic, the riptide lipstick lacquered onto my lungs (by now, I’m sure, like tar from cigarettes – doesn’t makeup stick to ribcages too?).

i made up my mind to matter. i willed my matter to mistake myself for a woman. i willed my womanhood to hold close to my own hood (childhood being at least one reason why). i went, hooded and clutching, hansel and gretel-ing and groveling and ingratiating my way all the way to that hut in the woods (goldilocks was there, but baba yaga too). i told baba yaga of the words that keep wrapping around my head like a hood (is it a scarf, or a rapture?). she told me courage was a monument; i was a firebird; love was a causation; the divine feminine was a lake. i told her i had lost the ability to interpret fairy tales (childhood being at least one reason why), (and that furthermore, they were encouraging me not to). she said to be a woman; that’s what she told me to do. i told her my femininity was a pair of old crows tied to my appendages.

This is the way the story started

This is the way the story started. The story might have had chapters or thoughts or moments or stanzas, but they all bled together and they all looked like one another and so in truth…the story dug its swallowing hands out of the deep belly of its own fertilizer and ran around collecting its own raindrops until it was thick enough to be drunk. To be felt rolling down the throat. To leave a formidable taste in the mouth. At least the aftertaste could be described, if not seen.

Well, the story was about a girl. Or a girl was the story, or her story was the way she was all the parts of herself. At any given moment in her life she looked like a flash of light or a bolt of color nameless amongst the star region she claimed as her name. There was an alchemy to the world that had made her face pulse together out of a certain collection of elements…and that little bundle of genes had at last found its footing inside the realm of a daffodil that had turned fleshy and round at the edges.

Her dreams were made of all things she could find – old paper longings, new tides of reminiscences, soft lingering kiss intentions, and folded up wads of duct tape. Her dreams came in waves, in derivatives and in dollops. Her dreams scattered wounds across her fickle, freckled face and sewed patches on old-ragged-lawnchair-hand-me-down-hearts. She had a spherical soul and she dreamt her life away.

This was the story of the girl I wrote over and over. Her story kept beginning and kept ending and I kept finding myself in the middle trying to see if I could see her in any place other than the side of my mind. It began like this a thousand times and one…or at least, the moments when it began to begin wanted to convince themselves they were beautiful enough to be a beginning.

Lauren Suchenski is a fragment sentence-dependent, ellipsis-loving writer and lives somewhere where the trees change color. Lauren believes in the inherent creative capability within all people. You can find more of her poetry at @lauren_suchenski on Instagram and @laurensuchenski on Twitter.

Image Source: 

Jan Phoenix

Sometimes you wake and the world is a very different place to the one you fell asleep to. The whispered calm of night has been broken by rain and the metronomic tap of feet and cars, the hum of voices, have filled in those long stretches of quiet. Other times, the change is not as noticeable and you slip unaware into a day that you do not belong to. Your heart might still tick over and your clothes still swipe at your skin as though they were bought for somebody else, but every face you see is a mask and you, a chess piece.

His mother’s face, slapped with the yellow shadow of a night without sleep, opened the door. ‘Out the back’ she said with a slow flick of her neck, smoke hopping from her mouth with each word as her lips wrestled a cigarette.

That was the first day we spent in the shed.

Over three bruised hours we cleared a space inside for garden chairs and a table to play cards around. His Dad was a builder so the concrete box had electricity. We didn’t care much about the aesthetics of the place though; it was a cocoon, our own world. We plugged in a fridge and set up a cd player and, surrounded by rusting golf clubs, toolboxes and hose piping, that was the only connection to any peripheral idea we held of an outside. That world of tactile interaction and raw, clean experience was left behind for now anyway. Arguments and concessions later, posters were hung and screwdrivers were used to carve names into the red plastic of the table top. Had the concrete been wet we would no doubt have fumbled with sticks to leave our mark on the floor and walls too. We had always been close but here, I could almost feel the stifling breath of his movement and with no windows to dilute the air, the clunking weight of the door needed to be shouldered open every hour or earlier if our eyes began to sting from the smoke cloud that never dissipated to anything less than a blanket.

‘What do you want me to do with these?’ I said, kicking a box of magazines. The faces of television personalities that smiled from the yellow, curling covers seemed grotesque, dust and gravel sprinkled over their teeth and eyes. They looked as though they were being buried alive.

‘Throw them out on the grass, my Da will have to get rid of them’ said Ciaran. Affable and as charismatic as it is possible for a sixteen year old to be, being his friend had generally been a good thing. Sometimes though, when he spoke, the comedy of his words seemed to lean uncomfortably towards menace and a fear of being in the crosshairs meant you occasionally had to bite down on your pride and watch on with instinct crumpled and buried hard into your stomach, as some unfortunate stood at the centre of pointed fingers and sneers. Forcing yourself to ignore their discomfort, squashing it down somewhere dark and quiet, hung over you like a shadow but the counter-balancing elements of self-preservation and relief were usually enough to untie any brittle teenage shame. At least it wasn’t you, that time.

The shed became our map, our timetable and our prescription. Over a summer of twelve hours days and musky hormonal tension, various people passed through to play tunes or sometimes drink cans if we could sneak them past the glare of his mother. I didn’t think it at the time, but her skin, withering and puffy, with every hour etched onto her like a tattoo; she wore those days for us, she paid whatever we neglected to.

Girls would come by, possibly to brush against the earthy grip of our grubby world, but really to feel as though they were disobeying something. He would kiss them sometimes and I would make some mumbled excuse to go and smoke in the garden, kicking dew soaked weeds until they had finished. Outside, I would sit on a wall and count the headlights of cars that passed, letting those numbers pile up was a good way of pushing the absurdity of those nights out of my mind but it had a firm grip and when the air was silent like that I couldn’t drown out the creeping pinch of a summer being lost. An hour or a weekend later, the girls would get bored and leave, seeing our real world for the cardboard effigy it was, taking my doubts away with them in their pockets. No matter how many came and went though, we were omnipresent. We were the foundation.

We never spoke about the decision to stay inside that shabby fortress, friendship forced me to accept it without question. My walk to his house, past rows of identikit houses and through a laneway that was constantly flooded with the tang of last night, always meant passing faces that seemed to twist with questions and anger. I could see someone ahead, sitting on an electricity box, a pool forming between his feet from an hour, at a guess, of dedicated spitting.

‘Off up to your mate, are you?’ He squeezed every syllable from the word mate.

I kept my eyes low, concentrated on the sweep of my shoes, pleading silently that I would pass without anything else being said.

‘That prick won’t see it coming you know? You can tell him that, alright?’

I took those hits wordlessly, letting them soak into my skin and sink down to bone where they would take root with the rest.

Playing cards; switch, poker, canasta, they usually tugged the cloud of night from my mind but that morning I couldn’t shake those words, their cadence, the bristle of their threat, it all bounced between my ears.

‘What’s up with you?’ he said, irritated by my distance.

‘Do you ever get bored? Here, I mean. Don’t you ever want to go somewhere, instead of wasting hours in this shed?’ Bluntness spilled from me and, shaken and tired, I was desperate for air. I shuffled the deck, staring at the cards as they tumbled over my fingers, instantly wishing I could scoop those words up and hide them away.

‘If it’s such a waste then what are you doing here, then?’ He pushed the tip of his cap high and out of his eye line, watching me for a reaction; daring me.

‘Look, I didn’t mean anything by it, but, we spend every day in here and…’

‘and what? Not good enough for you, is it?’ A hot, angry glow had replaced my stomach. I wanted to stand up, to be anywhere but this stupid, shabby cage, but I couldn’t trust my legs to keep me upright.

‘You know that I’m here as your friend, from day one that was never an issue, you know that, don’t you? I’ve stuck with you, getting looks and snidey comments and it didn’t bother me’ I said. ‘But…’ I pieced together the angles and curves of sounds, formed the words, hoping they would stick long enough for him to hear them.

I closed my eyes.

‘You stabbed him.’

All his anger, every bubbling drop that had threatened and barked, it disappeared straight away. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

‘You know I didn’t mean to. You know what they put me through. Months of shit. Hidings on the way home, slashing tyres, a fucking brick through the car window. You know about all of it,’ he said. ‘That night, I don’t know, something broke.’

He spoke with the voice of a child. It quivered, naked and alone, and then he wasn’t trying to explain anything, he was asking, just like he had asked the only other boy in that classroom, while parents and older siblings had crowded around taking photographs and sighing contently, to join him, to be afraid and alone together. I had been the only other boy with no kind of safety net. Even then, not a decade combined, we recognised the need to be less than lonely so we sat together and we weren’t.

A feint, empty blue was painted across the sky the next morning and I wondered if today too, I had woken to a different world. I walked slowly past the identikit houses and, like every other morning, I searched each one for a change, something new that separated them from each other, from yesterday, from themselves. They remained; stoic and beige. The lane was empty so I stopped to smoke, my jacket scratching the wall as I slid down to sit. There was nothing, here, behind me, or in that shed, so after a few minutes spent grabbing fistfuls of grass, sprinkling each wisp over my torn and scuffed shoes, I stood and walked. I walked past his house, my head kept level and straight in case I saw the casually expectant faces of his mother or sister through a window. I was afraid to see him watching for me, to see the confusion he would have felt when I didn’t arrive as usual. I walked for hours that day until my legs burned dry and my back arched. I walked through lunch and almost walked through dinner too. As I ate, my legs danced beneath the table, urging me onto the path again.

The walking stopped after about a week. My muscles, now twisted and angry, had started to keep me awake at night so I called to other friends, tried to gather something communal and stitch together things that were long frayed. Being outside this tribal huddle felt isolating at first, I had to keep knocking, some initiation to test my loyalty but slowly, things grew and I felt the panic of a sprint finish towards the end of the summer. Hours had been wasted and the sun was not hanging over us for as long as it had weeks before, swinging across the sky that little bit quicker, but that didn’t matter all that much now. Whatever light it could give me, I would drink it down.

I passed my mother at the telephone seat; an archaic beast of a thing, lacquered heavily and gaudily dressed with satin and lace placemats, the phone was still in her hand and the whistle of the dial tone buzzed softly, making me stop.

‘Is everything okay?’ I said, pulling my jacket on, my hand on the door handle.

‘He didn’t take enough’ she said, her cheek sucked in on one side, her teeth clamped down hard on the inside of her mouth.

‘Enough what? Who are you talking about?’

‘They think that he didn’t take enough of them. He might be alright, no way of knowing yet though. Too soon,’ she said.  ‘Too soon.’

‘Who?’ I said, but I didn’t need an answer. My bones fell away and I was empty. I felt a kick, brutal, pulling the air from my chest and steadied myself against the wall.

‘His brother found him; said that he had his head on the table, his cap was over his eyes and he thought he was asleep, until he saw the mess.’ Trailing off, she dabbed at silent tears and walked to the kitchen where the pot, long boiled, was chugging noisily and turning the window to mist. I followed her, watching her light a cigarette and lean heavily on the back of a chair.

Alexander Shustov

Having lost all faith in humanity, having dated a daisy chain of douchebags that if lined up – nuts to butts – would circle the world twicely and still wind up on her doorstep, hungover, saying some shit like they forgot their hoodies/lost their keys/can they sleep on the futon (well okay, but no touching clause in effect!), having tough-loved herself – suck it up, bitch! – into believing she was worth more than that – quitting – and that giving herself more time (even!) and another chance (yet!) was the best/most self-caring- est thing – haven’t you learned by now, silly goose? – when trying on a new man, like a squeaky pair of discounted “designer” shoes that salesperson Mango attested – attested verily! – would break-in overtime, meld to a custom-fit – like magic! – get comfy and cozy with all your ingrowns and bunions, learn to love you with all your faults, i.e. just the way you are [and btw, that wedge heel? makes your calves look sooo amazing, gurl! (can I put these in a bag for you, or are you wearing them out of here, Miss Sassy Lady?)], having repeat-cycled through all the obligatory motions of cis womanhood, the yin/yang whiplash of self-improvement credos/morning-after-walks-of-shame (rollercoaster ride a back massage in comparison), on the eve of her 37th birthday, hair grease-knotted, unshaved legs yoga-pantsed, face stuffed with cheap chuck taco – actual taco, not a euphemism, you sickos! – Beth decided, goddammit and for chrissakes, if she can’t get what she wants out of life, i.e. happiness, welp, she might as well clean this motherfucking apartment.

Where’s the Febreze?

Pine Acres, the garden apartment community where Beth rents, welcomes inmates residents with an emerald green sign out front, mock-carved out of “wood”: PINE ACRES A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE! Grammatical microaggression #1: no comma after ACRES. What a lying liar, that sign – it’s not a great place to live, not from what Beth can see, in her toaster reflection or in the immediate surround: unit after unit of unemployed beer bellies, tramp-stamped single moms, short-bused special kids, game-show-gripped cottonheads, tripedal dogs, glaucoma cats, undocumented reptilia, etc. No one’s life is great here – no one’s, Beth! – so grow some empathy/a pair of ovaries, wouldja please? Say it aloud, thricely, shiny appliance facing, like you mean it: I’m not alone. Go on – say it, Beth. Beth? Hello? Ms. Elizabeth M. Brock, hello hello, are you there? This is your therapist-embedded-conscience speaking! Fine: I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I’m not alone. There. Happy now/feel better? No. Absofuckinlutely not. FWIW: rye’s burnt.

Is this it?

**crawls out from under kitchen cabinet**

**fluorescence aided, reads aerosol can**

Nope! a/o Gah!

Wasp spray.

It’s PLEEZ-NO-BEEZ, a rust-bottomed souvenir from late last August (that romantical dead zone between Josh II and spelled-with-an-h Thom), when the A/C blew out, and Rick the Dick Super’s spinning-arrow office sign pointed to Not On Premises, and Beth, problem-solving, opened a window for air – pointless! – and in exploded a colony of pent-up stingers, happy to meet Beth, face-first. Severe reaction: pink gumballs for eyes, ten days to re-open. Beth’s third reason for hospitalization, year last. The second being a broken leg, the first being a suicide attempt. The second and first things, they were a 2-for-1/same-day kinda deal, just reverse order. January 15th, MLK Day. I have a dream.

Do I, like, not own cleaning supplies?

What the literal fuck.

With an (online) Master’s in Library Science, but currently making (split) ends meet as a tip-reliant hair washer at Curl Up & Dye (out on Route 22), Beth, these days, she dreams of corrections. For starters, rage-painting a comma – the world’s fucking-est hugest comma! – after the ACRES on the PINE ACRES sign. A Costco-sized can of white matte, cartoonishly oversized brush, huge sweeping strokes, just for show, is how Beth would get ‘er done, this DIY fantasy born of adjusted expectations (see: impending 37th birthday). Not that Beth would ever vandalize, no, Beth would never. In the way Beth’s mom rejects accepts that Beth’s just not the marrying kind, is how Beth has come round to that painful self-realization: she’s just not hoodlum material.

PINE ACRES {COMMA} A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE!

Oh Nance! how could Nance even begin to understand Beth’s predicament? Nance grew up in a different generation, didn’t she now, a different era, altogether! An era of such a thing as going steady. Of such a thing as holding hands. Of such a thing as naming your firstborn after your great-grandmother (see: Elizabeth), and not, like celebrities tools parents these days, a piece of fruit (see: Mango).

Is that it, the problem? Her name? Does “Beth” just scream “unlovable”?

Like.

If Beth were named Mango, like Mango’s named Mango, would she be happier?

Like.

Were she a Mango/Pineapple/Kumquat, say, and not a Beth/Karen/Rachel (sad!), how could her life, like, NOT be a party, 24/7?

Like.

How could her every waking moment, like, NOT be lit AF?

Beth considers this, what’s in a name, anyways, as she hoofs it to the Curl Up, arms swinging, pits chafing, crossbody lunch tote bouncing off her butt, new “Steve Maddens” digging into her left heel/right big toe, blisters weeping anew. She overslept – crap! – Dee’s gonna be pissed! Squeak squeak squeak squeak. Passing it now, the sign she’ll never correct/vandalize, pretends she doesn’t see it, does. Squeak squeak squeak squeak. Eight more months of this Court-imposed ambulation before her license un-suspends and Beth can drive again. Ho boy! Squeak squeak squeak squeak. Not that Beth owns a car, anymore, nor, with all the psychotropics and anticonvulsants trip-wiring her CNS, should Beth be anywhere near a manually-operated vehicle. Squeak squeak squeak squeak. The plastic amber bottle of Beth’s Life, its WARNING label should read: May cause dizziness, nausea, impaired thinking, depression, suicidal ideation, compulsive behavior, substance abuse, body dysmorphia, crushing loneliness, fallen arches, mommy issues. Talk to your doctor if any of these symptoms persist. Or adopt cat. Name cat Ruggles. Tell Ruggles problems. (Ha! like Ruggles care!) Filled on: 4/2/1978 Refills: 0

Wait wait, ok, here we go! What’s this?

100% Pure Ammonia.

That’s good for polishing highly porous and untreated woodwork, right?

**unscrews cap, gets whiff**

Christ on a cross, that’s harsh!

Words create your world, your best self, is a sine vino veritas of psycholinguist and addiction expert Dr. Barbara Mathers (Suite 3A in the Hamilton building, Rt. 9 Korporate Kampus). Barb’s job is convincing Beth not to kill herself. Or at least refrain from negative/unhelpful verbiage when discussing year last’s Incident, i.e. Beth’s calling it a “shit attempt” or a “fucked up jump”, characterizing her right tibia as “snapping like Britney Spears”. (See what you did just there?) Next time, goes Barb, why not say something kinder, more compassionate, i.e. “I tried my best”? or “I’ll do better next time!” Can we try for that, Beth? Can we aim for an Easy Achievable™?

I don’t know, Barb.

Please stop calling me Barb, Beth.

You said I could call you Barb, Barb.

When did I say that? And why would I?

You know, for a psycholinguist…

Small steps leading to big steps! is the beauty of the Dr. Mathers Step Chart to Doing Life™. Basically it looks like a ziggurat: Easy Achievables™ the terrace stairs gradually building, ramp-like, to the soundly supported top tier/temple of your Realistic Life Goal™. Beth’s Realistic Life Goal™, the top tier/temple of her personally customized ziggurat, being something like “Have a Life/Goal.”

Always a ziggurat, never a pyramid.

Isn’t that what the lovelorn say?

Well fuck the ziggurat! It’s Beth’s motherfucking birthday – well almost, goddammit – and if birthday girl wants to drunk-clean her efficiency apartment – hahaha, efficiency! – then birthday girl’s going to motherfucking drunk-clean her efficiency apartment! Hey Barb? Sobriety? You can shove it up your Sphinx! **swigs Wild Turkey** I mean, just what exactly, do and pray tell, is so goddamn efficient about this so-called efficiency apartment? What about, exactly, its rusty two-burner electric stove, its leaky frost-ridden half-fridge, its deafening compact dishwasher, its kitchenette is the living room is the bedroom, its murphy bed is the bed is the sofa is the ironing board, its 500 sq. ft. of everything in the openness, its you on the toilet-ness, from all points, visible? Had it made Beth more efficient, life-wise, i.e. maximally productive a/o minimally wasteful vis-a- vis effort? No. No it had not. Nay if anything, since moving into this affordable housing dump, Beth had become less efficient, life-wise, i.e. minimally productive a/o maximally wasteful vis-a- vis no effort. She had fallen behind, her life’s After shot worse than its Before, the Before being that magical ten-year-ago-time ~ Before Beth’s First DUI ~ when Elizabeth M. Brock had her shit together (see: a major-related job), and was making good decisions (ignore: an unfortunate Pepe the Frog tat), and yeah sure, things hadn’t been perfect in the past-past either (think: raped in undergrad), but for all intensive purposes, hey, at least she didn’t have a record! Sides, Elizabeth was on the good side of 30, then. Time aplenty for Nance to become a grandma!

[Pretend friends enter, laughing.]

Did you just say intensive purposes? / Isn’t it intents and purposes?

Omg, hahaha, that’s so Beth! / We’re, like, calling you that from now on.

Fucking genius hilarious! / HAHAHA! / We love you Beth!

Time: two hours later.

Efficiency Apartment: still filthy

Beth: fetal on lino

Who is Beth kidding! **sobbing into Swiffer** She’ll never be a Temple of Uruk, or, or, an Etemenanki dedicated to Marduk in Ancient Babylon! Best Beth can hope for – Elizabeth M. Block, that loser! – is putting on a bra and leaving the house, and not even a High Effort bra, either, we’re talking the having-a-fat-day kind that pulls over your head, stretches sweatshirt-style, no judgment? Remember, back in Nance’s Day, when a sports bra meant you played (lady) sports? jogged? Jazzercized? stayed active and watched your figure – 34-25-36 – because that’s how you found yourself a find, caught yourself a catch? Remember, back in Nance’s Day, when an Efficiency Apartment was called a Bachelor Pad, because that’s who lived in a place like this, a stubborn failure of a man, society’s joke, the type of Low Value XY Nance’s daughter would never date – no, never! – because your Elizabeth, she has standards, deserves the best, plus it’s not like she’s ugly? Remember when, and Nance does, if you weren’t exceedingly fat or wart-ridden, if you remembered to smile and play dumb and douche your vagina – daisy fresh! – that the opposite of a Bachelor arrived on time, just as you expected, gainfully employed and ring in hand, a ready-to-ship Husband?

Yeah no. Beth can’t either.

Times have changed.

Givens that were givens, they’re not givens, anymore.

Even Efficiency Apartments, now they’re calling them Studios.

To make it sound cool to be poor.

And maybe it’s for the best.

Because who needs things that dig at you, like ill-fitting underwires and shitty exes, when you’ve got fantastic elastic, the polymer that loves you back?

And Ruggles, can’t forget Ruggles!

Ruggles have ridges!

Who loves ya, Rugs!

Rugs?

**checks cell phone**

11:59 PM -> 12:00 AM

Officially Beth’s birthday.

No texts. No messages.

(Nance, she’ll call in the morning.)

Happy birthday to me.

Beth.

That’s me.

I’m Beth.

Jessica Bonder is an American fiction writer and actor. She has previously published works in London-based STORGY Magazine. Her short story “Not Today” won first place in STORGY’s 2015 Short Story Contest, judged by author Paul McVeigh. She has stories forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine and Vending Machine Press (2017). She holds a BA in English and Art History from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in New Jersey. www.jessicabonder.com Twitter handle: @jessbonder

Photo by Kerstina Mortensen