IT WAS 1995; EVERYONE  was decrying the evils and excesses of corporate greed and Reagan style trickle-down economics. We had traded soulless pop music for disgruntled indie rock. Disaffected middle-class rockstars in cobbled-together garage bands who raged against the machine were being scooped up by massive record labels and neatly packaged for mass consumption. The media was filled with stories of the rise of counterculture, but I could never seem to figure out how it was actually counter—everyone was into it. And I mean, if everyone was into it, wasn’t it just culture?

Vibes seemed to be all that mattered or at least had proved more important than any sort of actuality. No one understood this better than the two Jennifers, in their ripped nylons, babydoll dresses, and Doc Martins, with their matching eyebrow piercings and well-practiced who-gives-a-fuck stares. To my knowledge they’d never actually protested or stood for anything—unless you counted self-interest—but they did a convincing enough job of acting like the world owed them something and that was enough to lend them an air of cool contrarianism.

Jennifer and Jennifer had accepted me into their exclusive clique on a conditional basis. The condition being that I remove all traces of me and instead fashion myself into someone totally different, someone decidedly more Jennifer. I accepted their condition, because everyone knows the only thing more important than being yourself is being popular. Since joining their clique, my days consisted of putting together outfits that proclaimed that I, too, didn’t give a fuck, and hanging out on the bike racks in front of the Red Rooster convenience store chain smoking cigarettes one of the Jennifer’s moms let her roll. Which, come to think of it, was also the other Jennifer’s mom, albeit once removed. Jennifer and Jennifer were stepsisters. Only a few months apart, they acted more like twins. Like an amoeba that split into two but still shared a single, entirely indifferent brain cell.

Jennifer leaned back on the bike rack, pert backside pressed against the storefront glass, hint of exposed black lace thigh high peeking out from under her micro dress. The elderly store owner, Mr. Williams, peered through the open blinds and gave her slender rear an appreciative glance. Well aware that the Jennifers routinely shoplifted, he chose to look the other way so long as they obliged with the occasional eyeful while leaning over the counter to chat.

“Do you think she did it?” This was one of the Jennifers’ favorite topics of speculation: the recent death of Kurt Cobain.

Jennifer popped a square of pilfered grape Double Bubble in her mouth. She chewed it thoughtfully, inflating it into a shiny mauve ballon before smacking it against her cherry-glossed lips, “Oh, for sure she did. I mean, like, everyone knows she was so jealous of how successful he was.”

I wanted to point out that Cobain was chronically depressed and that Love was successful in her own right and had no reason to be jealous of Kurt’s success. I mean, the guy wrote a song called Lithium, for Christ’s sake. But I knew it’d be lost on these two, who preferred the drama and speculation of a juicy scandal.

While the Jennifers were busy discussing their theories, a stranger in faded denim and unbuttoned plaid over-shirt pulled up to the Red on a black moped. This was a fairly unusual occurrence. The trailer park was mostly insular. No one was coming to the trailer park unless they had to. We knew practically everyone by name, and if not by name, then at least by sight.

The stranger removed his helmet and tipped his head towards us, revealing a mass of dark, chin length hair and a thousand-watt smile full of perfectly symmetrical, white teeth. “Afternoon, ladies.”

Jennifer and Jenifer returned his greeting with deadened stares. I attempted a practiced ennui, but despite my best efforts to appear cool and aloof, I felt a tug at the corner of my lips.

“Who’s that?” I whispered to Jennifer, overtaken by a sudden and inexplicable curiosity.

“I think his name is JB or something stupid like that. He just moved into his grandma’s. They live in the trailer across from ours. Brenda says he has some rich architect dad or something who travels a lot. He got kicked out of boarding school, so his dad sent him here to live with his grandma as punishment.”   

I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. Expelled from some fancy school and sent to live in a cramped, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter trailer in a shitty rural trailer park. Those who ended up in Pine Village usually ended up as lifers. It was colloquially known as the Village of the Damned because some families had been in the Village for two and three generations. Rumor had it that those who left were somehow marked by their time, cursed to return, because for some reason they always came back. I refused to leave my future up to the mercurial fates, so I’d cultivated a sense of self-determinism and had begun stashing my babysitting money for my eventual escape. College seemed out of reach—I had good test scores but skipped way too much school to have decent grades, and besides, I had no idea how to even apply or where I’d get the money—but I figured I could get a waitressing job, maybe save up enough money to get an apartment in the city and sell my artwork at a local market or something. I imagined I’d still end up poor, but at least my new flavor of poverty would be the more romantic, bohemian variety.

“Come on. My mom gave me cash for a dime bag. Chad’ll give it to me for five; we can use the rest to buy a bag for ourselves.” Chad was Jennifer’s boyfriend and one of the many local drug dealers. She said she liked him because he was mature and had a good paying job. I supposed even the hills look like mountains from the valley. He was going into twelfth grade in the fall with us but was a couple of years older because he’d been held back in kindergarten and then again in seventh grade. Jennifer’s mom didn’t know that he sold to her at a discount rate, so whenever she did a run for her mom, she was always able to get a second bag for personal use.

We got to the Jennifers’ trailer just as their mom was leaving for her shift at the meat processing plant, which was where half the local population was employed.

Jennifer’s mom squinted, her blue eyeliner rimmed eyes scanning us suspiciously for signs of being high. “You girls didn’t pinch any of my weed, did you?”

We had smoked a bit with Jason before leaving, but Jennifer, well aware of her mom’s paranoia had insisted we all spritz some perfume, pop a mint, and use eyedrops before leaving his place.

“Of course not! I’m not a fucking thief.” This wasn’t entirely true, although in this particular instance she hadn’t technically pinched. “Go ahead and weigh it if you’re so fucking paranoid, Brenda.” Jennifer pronounced each syllable of her mom’s name with scathing emphasis. Brenda was Jennifer’s mom, and her husband Rick was the other Jennifer’s dad, but both girls referred to her and her husband simply as Brenda and Rick.

Brenda, duly weary of Jennifer’s protestations of innocence, took up the challenge and grabbed a scale from the cupboard then set it on the counter and placed the baggy on it. She eyeballed the little digital screen as numbers rolled across it before settling then announced with genuine surprise, “Huh, I guess you were telling the truth.”

Jennifer shot her a look of smug contempt, “Yeah, guess I was, huh? And anyway, don’t you have someplace to be?”

Brenda gave a shrug of contrition, “Hey, sorry. You know I need this shit for my pain management. They cut me off the Percocet last week and the weed is the only thing that cuts the pain enough for me to get through my shift. No hard feelings, hey?”

Brenda had one of her hands mangled at work in the spring. The scrawny bones of her right wrist and most of her fingers completely crushed in one of the processing machines. She’d received a meagre three thousand dollars from insurance for it, which, instead of doing the maintenance work to her car that needed to be done, she’d invested in a new hot tub. The car had given out entirely the following month, and the spa now sat mostly empty with a foot of green sludge in the bottom because the electricity costs proved too high. Worker’s compensation had determined three months later that since she had regained movement, she was fit to return to work, no matter that she continued to experience debilitating chronic pain. With no working vehicle she’d been forced to bum rides from Darrell, who always made the same lame “ass, grass, or gas” joke every time he picked her up.

Brenda fussed in the entryway mirror, securing her frizzy permed highlighter-yellow hair in a leopard print claw clip, and then grabbed her keys from the console table. “I’ll be back around eight PM. There’s a frozen pizza in the freezer if you girls get hungry.”

We settled into the brown, oversized sofa and Jennifer rolled a joint while her sister flicked through the channels on the wood floor-model TV, finally settling on MTV. Wonderwall came blasting through the little built-in console speakers while black and white images flashed across the screen and Noel and Liam played with a studied detachment.

Jennifer took a hit from the joint and passed it to Jennifer, then asked, “Who would you rather fuck? Liam or Noel?”

Jennifer exhaled and responded without hesitation, “Obviously Liam. Noel is such a weird little freak.”

I preferred Noel, who was, as far as I could tell, the more intelligent of the two, “But Noel writes all their songs. They wouldn’t even be a band if it wasn’t for his songwriting. I’m going to say Noel. Definitely Noel.”

The other Jennifer shot me a look that said, Eww, shut the fuck up.

Jennifer didn’t seem impressed with my choice, “So you’re into fucking weirdos? Is that it?” She nudged her sister and sniggered, “Ashley the freak fucker. Has a kind of a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” •






Jennifer Ostopovich lives in Canada with her family and five pets. She works as an editor at Hobart, and her writing has appeared in Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Burial Magazine, Maudlin House, HAD, and elsewhere.

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We Are in the Age of

The snake eating its tail,
untying Gordian knots
w/chatbots
as my brain rots,
late to the party
right on time to pay extra
I’m an American NPC
w/23 canned responses. Exactly
enough to deflect,
these chains of failed dreams. And yet

I’m happier, stronger,
and more hopeful
than ever.
I’m in my dreambig era,
and while life is but a nonconsensual simulation
bookended by silence,
it’s a damn good one.

When I Was Young

I was raised on the axis
of hope and promise:
North Coast California
year 2000
interregnum—
before the
empire
bared its teeth
in the mirror
and the dot com
went mushroom.

On the last day of school
we camped
at Heart’s Desire Beach
building cities in the sand
and walking on Mars.
Forecast:
fog clearing, endless
in the golden hour
riding the Pacific plate
fault lines
slipping
smooth.

When I Grew Up

My first boss
was a Sufi mystic
biochemist, plastic surgeon.
Thru ecstatic glass
he glimpsed paradise
in a cesspool
humanity a hurricane
of yellow-green lightning
raindrops with legs
praying for wings.
In a basement,
I ghostwrote
his theory of everything.
He limped to my desk
said I love you
and fired me
the next day.

I respawned
at Google
as a gilded gear
beside a man
who spun too slow
on his swivel chair.
He dropped from his contract
onto the streets
his safety net
a stairwell
swatting at mama flies
in the silicon desert
as her babies nursed
on his wounded leg.

Rob and Behzad
still visit me in vapor
whispering of a cyclone’s eye.
Shall we all sprout rotors
and transcend!
Or rain down—
locust fallen
in a kindly sigh.






Trevor Cohen is an author, storyteller, and creative organizer. He published a book on solutions to climate change, writes fiction and poetry about finding magic in the mundane, and hosts events to harness collective creativity. He created Day of the ___ Writer, where 150 writers opened windows into their creative worlds, and organizes the Spill Your Dreams writing collective.

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I

Love, when extolled, is no longer owned.
We’ve never been home, just inmates of
borrowed fire. This affinity with time must
be severed. My best amounts to sequences of
doomed endeavors. My blood pitches east,
but I’m from the Midwest. Factories abandoned
and rivers frozen well into Spring. Grief, ultimately,
was a sign of life. All I’ve seen has convinced me that
nothing is real. Our means of escape remain concealed.

II

I am home inside your ball of string
your history of history suspended
above an abyssal static.
So entwined our nerves
we coronate the winceless.
Frayed coyotes in search of wolves;
there was supposed to be order to this
there was supposed to be no leap-froggin'
the green of my spine, the architect of my gospel.
You taste prone to disappearing acts. Look to the sky
and ignore all those stars. Walk off the stage
if that's where it leads.

III

We’ve had to run before.
The tumult was brief yet
held brilliance. I want to
be an actor. I was irascible.
Weaned myself from innocence.
My needs tend to get lost. You
were brave and covered.  

IV

I remember my father as something bulbous
who snatched me from my crib and hid me amid the reeds
behind our house and threatened to kill all that approached
because his blood sugar was low and he'd been to Vietnam
but I remember it as a dream. Like when he told me
all who fell from a waterfall became the sticks that floated
at the bottom. Waterlogged sticks not good for nothing.
Not even kindling.

V

Didn’t cry when my dad died. His obituary slid under my door.
Death by proxy. Brother came to my apartment multiple times.
Missed the funeral and was unhoused when we last spoke. My
voice echoed through the stairwell. No one survives existence.
Borne of a sustaining absence. Sight of the tides tore me up.

VI

Escape has become your prison
and only behind a lock door will you feel free.
Inside of you is a human soul and it was borne
from the same stuff as extinction. I have a name
for every shadow, a color assigned to each emotion.

There are vines you can climb and see the sun
and others that dig into the dirt. But when sorrow
ruffles her feathers and pulls the twigs from your nest,
you won't remember me as anything
but what used to be where the gazebo is now.  

VII

We were cast to wind like embers. I
began buried in a trench. I flinch, in
my sleep, at each recollection. We
started empty as the Earth used to be.
The waves, green-blue, were the same
after I found purpose. This city, filled
with liquor stores and churches will,
eventually, usurp us.

VIII

You are men.
Endurance is all that’s required of you.
A theoretical black that glistens in the sun.
A despotic dissection of a meandering love song.
You are to be tied by the waist
To whichever moon arises in the sky.

You are fated to hurt and to be replaced.
You are fated to be.
You are men.

IX

I was afraid of being seen. The trees have evolved
past knowing. The wild’s not in grocery store aisles
but in her eyes. Being open isn’t something I’ve tried.

I would go to hades, inside myself. This is where I
found the will to live. Still, in our pursuance,
beauty’s lost. The spotlight hid more than it revealed.  

X

Nevermind my basic skill. The area of my loins is optional.
Huddle under the weight of me. A vicinity of malleable wax.
I am a houseplant that only thrives once the gardener has died.
I don’t want to kiss you I want to bite the teeth out of your mouth.
I will suffocate for you alongside you like a wandering painted bird
That gets mistaken for ghosts. I will suck all the air out of you.
Leaving only those parts of you indistinguishable from stone.

XI

I pine for all you describe. Being in love feels
like a series of crimes, one after another.

Nothing’s forgotten, only stored in the subconscious.
I’ve since altered my expectations.

Couldn’t find myself in mirrors or puddles
after rain. These follies nearly defined me.

While in both worlds, I could no longer see.
I’m venting again.

XII

A life without love
is a game in which
you wait.

A life without love
is a daiquiri
with no ocean in sight.  

XIII

Mind became a weathervane, directed by wind.
We’re see-through when autumn arrives. You’re
brave when contradictions are embraced. The rain
is close behind, but hasn’t reached us. I dig into the
earth, holding my heart.

XIV

I have a hand for my heart
and a hand for my keys
and a hand for my watch
and a hand for my cock
and a hand for my heart
and a hand for my heart
and a hand for my heart

O Romeo, to see you poisoned beside me
with nothing in your hands.

XV

Her mind’s covered in golden leaves. The sky doesn’t
feel as true as the oceans seem. I was unmedicated:
something new was being created. We did a table reading
of an August Wilson play. Being someone else, momentarily,
feels healthy.

No ring I have fits her finger: each slips off. My flaws, like
tides, will carry me where? I was outside myself, at the beach.
Hollowed out by new ideas. She’s hallowed ground: even her
silence is music. Absolution comes for us all.  

XVI

The rain hasn’t stopped in days. The best I can do is submit to the body.
I shrink inside it for warmth, I try to vanish from it in sleep
but the electricity sizzles me awake. I try to run away from it using its legs.
I know there’s nothing wrong with the body, only the tendrils that
keep me suspended inside it. I think I’m dying but fear I am not
and that this is only the excruciation of living.
I think the roof is leaking but I’m afraid to go check.

XVII

Pigeons nested in our flat’s attic. These memories
feature every Michigan season:

They pull at me like strong magnets. This place
abandoned reason a long time ago.

XVIII

Under the light of blind andromedas,
I’ve envisioned sorrow in many gowns.
Imagined them all torn to pieces,
littering the landscape from here
to our caves.

The windows let in no draft.
Still she enters moonlit nude,
lays beside me while I sleep
and shoves her feathers down my throat.

It’s a sick solace to find she visits you as well.  

XIX

You travel like water between stones.
Our eyes are marked by existing. You

vowed not to divide yourself with thirst.
The sky has always stretched beyond my

vision. I’ve no reverence for place: state
of mind is my only inheritance.

XX

When I was twenty-one,
I believed depression
Was my guide
And I was wrong.

Today I am forty-two.
I believe joy
Is my guide
And I am wrong.





J.L. Moultrie and Eric Subpar are listening to Sadness right now and thinking about death, but in a fun way.

IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE. I’M  in Louisiana. You stayed in Italy again. Mom and I are preparing dinner– or rather, I am. She’ll take partial credit, pouring the salad dressing as if it counts as equal work. It’s ironic, considering that’s exactly what your family always credits me for: “Jana’s really good at making salads.” Whispered while aggressively underlining salad. A master class in delivery.

I could’ve been offended, but I grew up watching the Muppet Babies. That show prepares you for more of life than you’d think. When you’re five, identifying as Kermit the Frog, and Miss Piggy relentlessly tells you, “How lovely you look… considering,” you learn early to be armed and ready for any unredacted comments that come your way.

I lift a spoonful of the lamb stew I’m simmering to my lips. Needs more garlic. It actually doesn’t, but since you never let me cook with garlic I’m spitefully dumping in three times as much.

“Jana!”

“I’m right here, Mama.”

“Right. Do we really need to put the leaf in the dining room table? It’s heavy and hard to assemble. Some people can just sit around the couch and eat, no?”

“It’s Christmas.”

“I’m aware of the holiday, Jana.”

“We’ve never not all sat around the table. Why would we suddenly change that?”

“Such a nostalgia-stickler.”

“I thought you were too.”

“Oh no. I’m not bound to things like that. I’m free.”

“‘K, well, I don’t know what that means. But we’ve done the same thing every year. For every holiday. For my whole life. So, your freedom instilled that sense of tradition in me.”

“Fine. Jana. Make me the bad guy.”

“What– are you talking about?”

“Valerio’s not here. You don’t need to impress him.”

“I’ve never tried to impress Valerio. And certainly not with a longer table.”

“Last Christmas, when he showed up, you bought a 150 dollar turducken.”

“Because it was Christmas. And–” I stop, knowing there’s no point.

Maybe she’s anxious. Holidays are different. Without Dad. I should just agree.

I think she prefers it when I’m here alone. Without you. Only because she doesn’t have to share my attention. After Dad died, did she need to be a “we” with me instead of him? It wouldn’t be crazy. She was married at twenty-two. She was a “we” most of her life.

She’d be upset to hear this. She’d deny it and say, “Fine, make me the bad guy if that’s what you need to do, Jana.”

Do I really do that? Because you say the same thing. I just thought I was trying. To understand. To be better. To make things better.

Sometimes that requires buffering. I process out loud. That’s the part you never liked. I’m buffering, and you mistake it for final thoughts.

But you haven’t said a single word to me in months. Well, that’s not entirely true. When we go to your parents’ house, you start talking to me as if we never missed a beat. “Oh, tell them about so-and-so” you’ll say, and I look at you like you’re crazy, which I’m sure your family clocks. They don’t understand why I’m staring at you like you’re changing colors right in front of us, blue to red to gray.

I start chopping even more garlic. I’m getting angry, just thinking about us and why you’re not here and what’s wrong with me that I haven’t left you yet. I’ve been in Louisiana for a week and you haven’t called or even texted. Not once. I don’t recognize myself anymore.

Now, Mom’s putting a tablecloth on the dining room table, sans the leaf. You probably don’t know what a leaf is. It’s prolunga. For the table.

“Where’s your mandoline?” I call out.

“My what?”

“Your mandoline.”

“I knew you would do this, Jana.”

“Do what?”

“No, No, no, Jana. We’re not doing some big Italian thing just because you live there now.” She marches to the kitchen. “Of course, I don’t have this Italian mando-whatever.”

“Mom. It’s not even Italian. It’s French.”

“Fine. French!”

“How is me asking for a daily kitchen appliance making you angry?”

“Daily?”

“Okay. Weekly.”

“I’m tired of you making these grandiose ten course meals and needing a hundred ingredients.”

“Can you just ask one of your neighbors because I do need one to finish dinner.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll ask a neighbor if they have a mando–”

“Line. And they will.”

I thought my brother’s kids would make the holidays easier for her. Getting to be a grandma. Seeing their little eyes light up. I’m sure she wishes dad could see them. You never ask me about what he was like. Maybe it’s uncomfortable, but I love talking about him. It’s not just you. No one really asks me about him. Or what it’s like to lose someone to suicide. Someone who was happy. And fine. And where were the signs? And why would he do it? And will it hurt forever?

The front door opens. Mom returns.  “My neighbor happened to have one.”

“Lucky me.” 

She scoffs.

Now, she’ll be silent because she’ll think I was trying to prove her wrong.

You two have that in common. Use your silence as control. And it works. I apologize every time because I think I fucked up. But now, I don’t have the capacity to ask what’s wrong and say she’s right. Or pretend you are.

The silence settles in like it always does. Thick. Immediate. Familiar.

This is how it happens. Just a question about a kitchen tool, and suddenly I’m twelve, decoding tone, posture, breath. Looking at my skin, seeing it’s green again. Knowing I can’t wash it off. But all I’m ever really trying to do is figure out where I went wrong before anyone says it out loud. It’s how it feels with you too, like a kid fucking up. Always saying the wrong thing. Always catching hell for it. And then I latch onto that pain because it’s all I can see. I name it like you would a child. Like it would mind forever.

Then carry it like I invented the concept of carrying things, like I’m waiting for a patent to come through. I pretend holding the pain proves something. Hoping someone else might even notice and say, “Wow, that looks hard.”

And that would suddenly make me feel better because it becomes an accessory—one I could even make chic. My very own crown of thorns. Is this what I need? Why I stay? Waiting for acknowledgement? Or is it plainer? Simply fear that if I let it all go, I’ll find it was never weight. Just proof that I didn’t know how to move without it.

That’s why moments can’t stay small. They don’t get to be about a mandoline. Or a table leaf. Or garlic. They pull everything in with them. Every version of me that’s ever tried to get it right. And every version that didn’t.  So I keep moving. Keep cooking. Adjusting. Buffering. Pretending it’s fine.

As if effort alone might be enough.

The kitchen starts to smoke. I want a cigarette. Or a lobotomy. I’m not going to call you. The oven dings. I burnt the pecan pie. Completely. Not even salvageable. You would have called it.
That I’d burn it. Or over salt something.

The potato casserole looks okay though. The lamb stew–

Mom tastes it. “Oh, Jana. You put way too much garlic in this. Way too much.”

The front door opens. Chatter fills the house. Everyone’s here for Christmas dinner. Except you. •






Jana Godshall is an American writer based in Italy, where she shapes brand copy for clients in wine, healthcare, and tech, bluffing her way through tannins and big data. She got her start writing for a New York hip hop magazine. Then she made an unexpected pivot into children’s TV, writing for Disney and ABC Family, carrying with her the lyrical whimsy she picked up from Ying Yang Twins. She has since returned to creative writing. A member of the Writers Guild of America, Jana navigates Italian life one glass of wine and one questionable translation at a time.

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SHE’S SHORT AND CHUBBY with big glasses and frizzy hair and she keeps her shirt tucked tightly into elastic waistband sweatpants. Her nose is always running but she never blows it. Instead, she sucks in soggy sniffles or wipes her nose with her hand then smears the snot onto her pants and all her pants have crusty stains on the thighs. Her name is Margaret and the boy’s parents tell him he has to spend weekdays after school at her house.

This is not okay with him.

He throws a fit and stomps off to his room and makes sure to slam the door extra hard. He turns his speaker to full volume. Then he trashes the fucking place.

The dad comes in and steps over piles of clothes and scattered Legos and broken hockey trophies and he unplugs the speaker and takes it out of the room without a word.

So, the boy slams the door again and kicks a hole in the wall. The hole is baseball-sized. A stud is visible just off the edge of one side.

The dad stomps back in and his eyes bulge and he’s clenching his jaw tight enough to make his whole head tremble.

“What the fuck was that?”

He looks at the hole and then at the boy. The boy is sitting on the bed with newfound calm.

The dad says, “That’s enough,” but it sounds more like, “Daas enuffsf” because of the clenched jaw.      

He leaves and comes back carrying a bucket of spackle and a putty knife and sets them on the carpet beneath the hole and tells the boy to fix it.

The boy looks from the bucket to the hole to the dad. He says, “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Figure it out.”

He never does.




The mom’s new job means the boy can’t stay at home after school. It's the first she's worked in years. She’s not sleeping and the boy's fits make it worse. They try to find other arrangements but in the end settle on their only other real option. Grandma. The dad’s mom. The boy has only seen her smile once, when he split his chin on her front steps. Her teeth were bright yellow, their tips worn jagged.

It lasts one day.

She puts a sleeve of saltines and a glass of tepid water in front of the boy, then leaves him with a coloring book and a bag of broken crayons and colored pencil nubs and disappears to smoke cigarettes on the living room couch.

The coloring book is old and filled with sloppy scribbles well outside the outlines of civil servants like cops and firemen. The only uncolored page is of a mailman and mailwoman, smiling under their overflowing sacks of letters.

What the boy does is he takes a colored pencil nub and he draws a penis on the mailman and a set of breasts on the mailwoman. The penis is long and limp and stretches down the mailman’s leg. The breasts protrude past the mailwoman’s navel like overfilled balloons ready to burst.

He draws the lines heavy, grinding pencil into paper, then gets busy coloring the rest of the picture in with crayons.

The grandma hacks in the other room, long and dry. A lighter flicks. She inhales a moan, exhales a sigh. The couch squeaks as she pushes to her feet.

The boy panics. He scribbles at the drawing but the crayon’s softer tip only makes things worse, giving contrast to the floppy penis and full breasts.

She’s closer now.

He keeps scribbling. Hard and fast.

The crayon snaps, skitters onto the floor by her feet.

The boy freezes, then covers the drawing with his hand.

“Pick up that crayon.”

“Okay,” says the boy, glancing over his shoulder.

A moment passes. Neither of them move.

“Now,” says the grandma.

He tries to close the coloring book as he bends down but she catches the page. He smells her waxy skin and cigarette stank.

She lets out a puff of air. Like a gasp, but blowing out instead of sucking in.

Her tongue clicks once against her teeth, then again.

Tsk tsk.

She goes back to the couch. The flick of a lighter, her hacking cough.

The mom picks the boy up later and thanks the grandma for watching him.

The grandma looks down at him with a squinting scowl. “Don’t make a habit of it,” she says, and locks the door behind them.




Margaret has video games and is quiet and agreeable and is allowed chips and pop, and as it turns out, she's not so bad. 

Her dad works late and her mom is always in bed with headaches and Margaret is an only child. She has a pet bunny that keeps her company. A birthday gift from when she turned four. It’s white and fluffy and has red eyes and its name is Rebekah.

“Rebekah,” explains Margaret. “R-E-B-E-K-A-H. The Biblical spelling.”

Rebekah is entirely docile. Margaret dresses her and snuggles her and manhandles her in any way she wants. The boy would call it abusive except Rebekah doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn't seem to care about anything.

The boy thinks the bunny is weird. The red eyes freak him out and Rebekah’s always staring. He likes normal pets, like cats. He had a cat once, until it poked holes into the dad’s brand new leather couch. The dad counted the holes out loud. Six. He called the boy over to count them. Six. They counted them together. One two three four five six. Six holes every time. It became an outdoor cat after that.




Spring break rolls around and the boy spends even more time with Margaret.

Her mom hard-boils eggs and sets them on a plastic sheet at the kitchen table with a dozen different bottles of dye, then says she has a headache and goes to lie down.

The boy is three eggs deep when he gets the idea. It’s such a good idea that he's surprised it took him so long to think of it.

“Margaret,” he whispers.

Margaret sniffles and looks up from the egg she’s dunking into hot pink dye.

The boy smirks. He shakes the bottle of dye in his fingers and mouths, “Rebekah.”

Margaret wipes the back of her Easter-egg-dyed hand across her nose and looks over at Rebekah. She turns back to the boy and rubs the snot off against the thigh of her sweatpants. She's grinning.

Rebekah’s white fur becomes a canvas. Swirls of purple, drops of blue, coats of yellow. They try to write her name in dye but it keeps running down her side and they give up and switch to stripes and decide stripes are better anyways.

They empty every bottle. The dye holds in her fur. Rebekah is done. And she is glorious.

The boy's mom honks from the driveway and he comes out onto the porch and waves her in.

She shakes her head. “What? Let’s go!”

“Mom, you’ve got to see this,” he says, coming down the wobbly steps.

The mom is in no mood to be hassled. She tells him to get in the car. She says it twice.

He doesn't listen.

She climbs out. “I’m tired. We are leaving.”

“Wait, one sec Ma. Look.”

Margaret pushes through the screen door carrying Rebekah. She’s beaming.

The mom is not impressed. She grabs the boy's hand and drags him toward the car.

He looks back and Rebekah does something he's never seen her do.

She jumps. Out of Margaret’s arms.

And somehow, she's fast.

In three quick bounds, Rebekah scurries under the porch through a gap in the wooden grating. 

Margaret shoots after her.

“Come on,” says the mom. She pulls at the boy’s hand again. He yanks out of her grasp and rushes over to Margaret.

“Do you see her?”

Margaret’s on her knees, smushing her oversized glasses up against the grating. She looks up at the boy with worried eyes. “No. I don't.”

“We need to go,” says the mom.

The steps aren't nailed in right and Margaret starts pulling them loose. She heaves and grits her teeth and her face floods bright red. A thick stream of mucus runs from her nose. She puckers her lips to divert it around her mouth.

“Now,” says the mom. This time she manages to catch the boy.

“They…usually…come…right…out…” says Margaret.

And they come out.

Margaret falls back onto the walkway with an “OOF!”

The boy sees before Margaret does.

Rebekah flops out with the stairs. She doesn’t move. Mud sullies her colorful coat.

Margaret picks her up, her back to the boy and the mom. Slowly, she turns around.

Rebekah’s head and legs droop at twisting angles. Margaret wipes the mud away from the bunny’s eyes, then looks up at the boy. Her face is slack. Empty. She reaches Rebekah’s body toward them. Holds it in the space between them like an offering. Like she's asking, What's this? 

No one speaks. No one moves.

Until the mom squeezes the boy’s hand, gives it a little tug.

“Let’s go,” she says gently.

They get in the car and pull away.

The boy looks back when they hit the road. Margaret is exactly where they left her, watching them leave, still holding out Rebekah in all her technicolor glory.

He goes back to the grandma’s after that. •   





Alex Rost runs a commercial printing press outside Buffalo, NY.

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