< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE GARDEN YOU MADE Maureen Clark we planted our oak tree saplings on the same day our husbands raced their carts to the garden center check-out they grew even when we were no longer speaking and were still growing when we mended we always knew they would outlive us our little lives short by comparison to their ringed calendars I would not be surprised if they met on moonless nights to gossip about us our human foibles and I wonder if our oak tree sends messages of condolence to yours now that both of you are dead and the garden you made is gone In "The Garden You Made," the breakthrough I had was the ability to write in a more minimal style, leaving out much of the detail to get to the emotional truth of the poem. Previous MAUREEN CLARK is the author of the poetry collection This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024 ) and has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir, Falling into Bountiful: Confessions of a Once Upon a Time Mormon , is forthcoming from Hypatia Press. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue GOING SOUTH George Amabile for A and the others We’ve come down, here where the air is warm as blood – ten days in faux time, designed to heal a year of distress. But when toothpick and paper umbrellas in billowy glasses fail to console, we resort to the sea, where we, and everyone else, began. Underwater, stems are snake supple and the light is nuanced, gradual as it goes down, and down, toward green nights we’d never sleep through. This is where we may recover that moment, that lovely plunge of the heart, when we saw everything as a no thing, where emptiness gave radiance to the world. "Going South" describes a breakthrough in perception and feeling, an embrace of transcience that results in a world of renewed radiance. Previous GEORGE AMABILE has published twelve books and has had work in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, and Canadian Literature . Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue A HIGH SCHOOL MADRIGAL Naomi Ulsted Derek and Stephanie were in their usual eight-fifteen in the morning position: Stephanie pressed up against a bank of lockers, Derek’s hand on her ass, as they proceeded to eat one another’s faces off. At least that’s what it looked like to me. Frost clung to the grassy field beyond the lockers, but Derek and Stephanie didn’t mind the cold. I focused on getting past them and into the choir room. Slipping on a spit wad, I stumbled through the doors into Mr. M’s choir room. Unlike most of the teachers, Mr. M. opened the doors early so kids could hang out in the warmth. He rummaged through a haphazard pile of sheet music. “Morning, Mr. M.,” I called. He glanced up, giving me a distracted wave. Mr. M. was always fidgeting, rummaging, starting to review music, then jumping up to plunk notes out on the piano, then patting the pockets of his corduroy suit jacket as if searching for something, then darting into his office for his briefcase, then without opening it, returning to the pile of cluttered papers on his desk, a whirl of constant movement, anxiety, and distraction. And I loved every bit of it. In the bathroom, I checked the bandages on my shins. I was out of clean pants, so I’d had to wear a skirt, even though that meant I couldn’t hide my shins. After a massive argument, Mom had finally relented on her vow that I wouldn’t be allowed to shave my legs until I was eighteen, but she wasn’t happy about it. She had left a handwritten notecard. “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” – Proverbs 31:30. During my first shave, I’d sliced myself up good. Punishment for my vanity of wanting smooth legs. I took up my usual spot next to my best friend, Theresa. She offered me a slice of green pepper from a plastic bag. Theresa and I had basically been inseparable since second grade. We shared a locker, ate lunch together, and spent nights at each other’s houses at least a couple of times a month. I was grateful our school schedules were nearly identical because without her, I was awkward, silent, and withdrawn. In classes, surrounded by kids on the bus, or even at home with my own large and loud family, it was like I couldn’t figure out where to place myself in the scene, or what my role was. I really only fit as one half of a pair with Theresa. Mr. M. kneeled down, so his bald head was level with me. “Have you injured yourself?” His eyes darted to my legs. “Oh,” I said. “I was shaving.” I blushed. “With a machete?” He winked at me and then darted up to the front of the room as the bell sounded. I moved into my place in the front row of the soprano section. “Adams!” Mr. M. barked. “Put that lighter away before I set you on fire with it!” John Adams was several rows behind me, and as I turned, he threw a wad of paper at Stacy, whose hair flipped back as she swore at him, laughing. Stacy and her senior friends were loud girls who wore heavy eye makeup and talked about “partying,” and I was quite sure they weren’t virgins. They used profanity, which I figured was an indicator. John’s hair was long and flopped into his eyes, which were such a light and gentle blue that they were nearly transparent. I had fallen for him the day I walked behind him while he sang “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions. He was a senior and had only said possibly ten words to me, and those were words like, “Hand me that pencil, will ya?” Yet, there was something I loved in the sincerity of his singing and the earnestness of his face as he tried to pick out the tenor melody. “Jasmine!” Mr. M. hollered. “Give us an E.” Our foreign exchange student from Brazil, who had perfect pitch, sang out an exquisite E note. It was only during choir that we heard Jasmine’s voice. She was painfully shy otherwise. Much like me, but without the benefit of a best friend. She almost always had her nose in a textbook and she never laughed. Mr. M. closed his eyes, savoring Jasmine’s clear voice, then raised his arms, and without taking roll, without greeting the class, and without preamble, he launched us into our first madrigal of the day, “My Heart Doth Beg.” Mr. M. had a fondness for fifteenth-century madrigals. They presented four parts moving within one another, forcing us to pull together the frayed ends of our harmonies. When we were so bored with “My Heart Doth Beg” that we pleaded for a different madrigal, he’d have us learn one another’s parts until we could see how the piece was complete with the four lines interwoven. As usual, I wanted Mr. M. to know how well I’d learned my part. I was desperate to be heard and to stand out in his mind as someone special. Contradicting my mousy and withdrawn self, my voice could be wild and out of control, demanding attention. I belted out my part, but I was clearly overzealous or off-pitch because I immediately got “the hand.” When a singer was too loud or off-key, Mr. M. would raise his palm toward them. If the singer didn’t back off, he’d get closer until, if you were in the front row like me, the hand could be right in your face while Mr. M. crinkled up his own face in what could only be physical pain caused by atrocious sounds coming from your own voice. That’s what I got now, and I forced my voice into a near whisper. My failure still stung at the end of the period as Mr. M. reviewed our upcoming trip's details. The following week, the choir would take an overnight trip to perform at a middle school a few hours away. At home, this event had been preceded by multiple conversations with my mother, where it took all my persuasive arguments to get her to sign the permission form. She did not think it appropriate for girls and boys to be spending the night together, even though I explained, not so patiently, that we would all be on a gigantic gymnasium floor with the girls on one side and the boys on the other. Plus, there would be tons of chaperones, so it’s not like people would even have the chance to be fornicating. Well, Derek and Stephanie would probably figure something out, but I didn’t mention that. Finally, after promising to attend church on both Sunday and Wednesday nights the weeks before and after the trip so my Christian defenses would be ready for whatever temptations the choir trip would bring, she agreed to let me go. Theresa and I were beside ourselves with excitement, spending most of our time talking about which of our classmates would be the most fun to ride with on the bus. For Theresa, I knew that it was Bob Dietz. As we left the choir room, he swaggered in front of us, swinging his bangs out of his eyes. In a “secret” survey passed around the school last year, Bob’s ass had been voted the best in the junior class. The great divide between the junior and sophomore classes wasn’t the only thing keeping Theresa from talking to him, though. He had been voted Junior homecoming prince and was forever surrounded by his pack of popular kids. In the social hierarchy of high school, Theresa and I weren’t at the bottom, but we were nowhere close enough to the top to be allowed to speak to Bob. He was just as out of reach for her as John was for me. So we just kept to our own world and watched from a distance. We boarded the bus a week later as early morning mist rose from the grass and floated over the baseball field. The parking lot was empty except for cars belonging to upperclassmen. My dad had dropped me off on his way to work after we’d spent the forty-five-minute drive in silence. I’d glanced at him through the window as he pulled away, but it was dark, and he was shadowy behind it. It was the way things were with us. Theresa and I found a seat in front of Tim Anderson, who had already fallen asleep, his head resting against the seat in front of him. It was warm and quiet inside, and nearly everyone dozed. When I woke, Tim was placing tiny paper airplanes on my head. Theresa whispered he’d been doing this for several minutes. I was mildly flattered, but Tim was even lower in the hierarchy than we were. He wore jeans hiked up high on his waist, yet they seemed to be drawn downward, and when he bent over to pick up his duffel bag, I would see more of Tim than I wanted. “Knock it off,” I said, flicking the airplanes away. “Hey, Mr. M.’s telling a story.” Up in the front section of the bus, I could see Mr. M.’s bald head scrunching up and his hands gesticulating wildly. I knew right away he was telling the snowball story. Theresa and I made our way up front, and soon, a group of us was squeezing three or four bodies into the seats closest to him. Mr. M. told our class a story about once a week, although we begged for one every day. “Tell us about the loogie in the sandwich!” we’d say, or “Tell us about the one when the cow gets shot.” He repeated his stories often, which no one minded because his telling of them was so detailed and full that we felt like we were living it anew each time. Sometimes, his stories stung with sadness, and we’d file out of the choir room subdued and foggy, distractedly making our way to our next classroom. More often, though, his stories were full of tiny details that left us rolling with laughter. Mr. M. opened his eyes comically wide as he described the truck driver’s eyes as the snowball barreled toward him. He ducked from view behind his seat to show how the driver disappeared when the snowball hit its target. By now, our group had grown, so seniors, freshmen, and everyone in between were squashed together around him. A couple hours later, we stood in a close semi-circle in the school’s gymnasium. It was an hour until our performance, but Mr. M. wanted to hear the acoustics. We focused on him as he pulled us in tighter, pleading with us to listen to one another, hear one another’s parts, and remember what the song was about. Mr. M. always made us dissect the madrigal’s lyrics, pushing us to feel the passions of the fifteenth century. “Live it!” he would shout. I sang with zeal, watching him for signs that I should back off or, hopefully, sing more enthusiastically. Theresa was across the semi-circle from me, and I could usually pick out her part, but this time, I could only catch it faintly. I grasped my own part and sang confidently until Mr. M. gave me the hand, and I knew I’d blown it again. Defeated, I headed to the locker room with the rest of the girls. Theresa had gone ahead of us, and I looked for her as I stood in the mirrors, my reflection small and childlike next to Kathy and her perfect hair and makeup. “Hey, Steph!” Kathy shouted. “Let me borrow your eyeliner, bitch!” “Only if you twist my titties!” There was raucous laughter, and the eyeliner flew above several heads to Kathy. I recognized Theresa’s shoes under the stall and knocked. “Are you okay?” “My stomach hurts.” Theresa opened the door and sat down on the bench. She was white. “Do you have the flu?” “I guess,” she said. “I don’t know.” “Are you going to sing?” I asked. “Do you want me to tell Mr. M. you can’t?” “No.” She was unusually closed-lipped. My hands lay helplessly in my lap as if they didn’t know what to do. But as we walked on stage, it felt like every one of those middle-schoolers was clapping for me. Jasmine’s soft doe eyes locked with Mr. M.’s, and she sang out our starting note. I watched Mr. M. and I lived the lyrics, and I barely noticed anything else. Until partway through the second song, when Theresa quietly walked off stage as if she had a pre-arranged appointment. As I watched her disappear into the locker room, I faltered and lost my part. Mr. M.’s eyes had followed her, but now he scowled at me, and I struggled to re-find my place. After the performance, I found Theresa doubled over the bathroom stall, full-on sobbing. “I think you need to get someone.” We waited in the emergency room for what seemed like an eternity. The chaperone who had driven us had returned to the gymnasium, as we were evidently understaffed after all, and there was a major concern that without proper chaperoning, there would be fornication or drinking. The chaperone had already asked a couple of pointed questions about whether Theresa might be pregnant and seemed doubtful when Theresa had adamantly shaken her head. I had never been in an emergency room and was surprised at the amount of sitting and doing nothing involved. A middle-aged woman read Cosmopolitan as she waited. The cover advertised an article about the “10 Sexiest Things for Celebrities.” I wondered if that was different than the 10 Sexiest Things for Derek and Stephanie. Theresa rocked back and forth without talking, her head down. Every time the nurse entered, I was sure her name would be called, but it was not. Tears were dropping onto Theresa’s arms she had clutched around her middle. I went to the front desk, staffed by a woman with dull eyes. “My friend has been waiting a long time.” “We’re just a little busy right now,” she replied. “We’ll get to her as soon as possible.” I felt a twist of panic. I gripped the counter. “Something is really wrong with her. She’s not pregnant, she’s not on drugs. She needs to be seen right now. If she isn’t taken care of now, I don’t know what is going to happen.” My voice broke then, and embarrassingly, I stood at the counter and cried. But I saw a little life flicker in this woman’s eyes, and she went into the back. A minute later, she returned. “We’ll see your friend now.” I didn’t see Theresa again until she was in the recovery room following her appendectomy. Her skin was still pale, and her hospital gown lay sloppily, exposing her shoulder. I looked down, and the black and white tiles of the floor began to rush up toward me, and then there was a nurse holding my head down in between my knees. When I could stand, she guided me out of the room. I arrived back at the gymnasium long after our classmates had stopped laughing, shouting, and trying to sneak over to the other side of the gym. Theresa’s parents had offered to let me stay with them at the hotel and return home when Theresa could leave the hospital, but I had chosen to continue the tour. I still wanted to sing. But now, standing in the dark, listening to snores and trying to see which lump was my own waiting sleeping bag, I wished I had gone with them. I was relieved when Mr. M. appeared to guide me to my bag. As we made our way through sleeping bodies on the floor, I wanted to tell him the whole story. I wanted him to know how scared I’d been. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to hug me. But as soon as we were at my spot on the floor, he said, “Get some sleep,” and disappeared. I wondered where John was. Even Tim would have been a welcome conversationalist. But no one appeared. On the bus the next day, I sat in the seat with Jasmine as we drove down the highway. I was exhausted and felt out of place without Theresa. I leaned my head against the bus window. “What kind of music do you listen to?” Jasmine’s voice startled me. It may have been the longest sentence I’d ever heard her speak. “Only madrigals?” “Um, no. I don’t really listen to madrigals outside of choir.” We talked, working slowly through her struggles with English. I noticed that she laughed easily, just quietly. She wasn’t serious at all. I saw John making his way to the front of the bus to listen to Mr. M.’s stories. “He walks like, what do you call it? A big spider,” Jasmine said, mimicking his swinging arms. “You aren’t like I thought,” I said. “I thought you studied all the time.” “I just never have anyone to talk to.” Just then, Stacy plopped into the seat in front of us on her knees, her chin resting on her hands as she looked at us. “Hey,” she said. “Hi,” I offered. I couldn’t imagine what Stacy wanted with us. “You want a Twinkie?” She held a Twinkie out toward me. “They gave them to us last night and you missed out. I got an extra, though, so you want it?” “Okay,” I took the Twinkie. “Thanks.” “That must have sucked last night.” Stacy’s heavily lined eyes were kind. Right now, she didn’t really seem like a wild and promiscuous partier. Even if she did swear and use bad words. “God,” she said. “Where are we even going?” The bus was taking a detour. Mr. M. knew of a church with good acoustics in one of the tiny towns the freeway blew past. He’d arranged for us to have access to the sanctuary. Inside the domed church, sunlight shone through stained glass windows, and a quiet reverence filled the space, silencing our jokes and laughter as we filed into the center of the sanctuary beneath the high domed ceiling. The only audience member was a church secretary sitting in the back pew. Mr. M. drew us into a huddle and placed his finger over his lips. He waited until we were completely silent and then raised his hand to Jasmine for the starting note. The sound was incredible. It rang up and throughout the dome, bouncing from one angled section of the roof to another. One full measure later, as I began my second soprano part, I could still hear the ringing of the first note. The sound swelled through the room and seemed to move around and between us, even as we stood shoulder to shoulder. I closed my eyes and heard Jasmine’s first soprano dancing across the melody. Stephanie’s deep alto voice established strength and consistency. Kathy’s second soprano sang a note slightly under mine, and I recognized it as truer, so I matched it. John’s tenor played off the melody, and I heard the desire in it. I missed Theresa’s alto, but Tim’s bass struck a confident chord that anchored me. I listened and let my voice blend with the others. I realized I hadn’t been watching Mr. M. and no longer needed his gestures and facial expressions. Together, our voices wrapped around each other and became something beyond our own individual wishes, our loneliness, our restlessness, our confidences and confusions, and rang out; our voices rose up and into the dome of the church, then outside past the school bus and outside over the fields into the clear, clean air. When the last note stopped ringing, I opened my eyes to Mr. M beaming. He pointed a long finger at me. “Yes!” he said, “Yes.” “A High School Madrigal” has looked for the right home for many years. It was one of the first chapters I wrote in my memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest , forthcoming from High Frequency Press. During one of thousands of revisions, I removed it because it didn’t fit in the book's arc. However, I still love this story about belonging. High School is such an interesting time when you define who you are while you find the space where you fit. The breakthrough I had, where for a moment I stopped seeing people through their differences, but instead, through what we were as a whole, was pivotal for me. Previous NAOMI ULSTED writes fiction and non-fiction. She’s the author of the YA novel The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021). Her memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest, will be published in the fall of 2026 by High Frequency Press. She lives on the southern coast of Oregon. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue GEORGE RUNNING POLES Michael Shay Two teen boys walk along the asphalt bikeway in Riverton, Wyoming. George Jumping Bull pushes a shopping cart he found abandoned in the winter-brown grass. He’s wearing black sweatpants bunched over white running shoes and a red bandanna tied around his close-cropped hair. Jimmy Jones wears his black Oakland Raiders cap sideways, its bill pointing east. He milks a pint bottle of vodka as he walks. George reaches for it. “Not so fast,” Jimmy says. He slurs his words as he swats at George’s hand. “Let me try some, man,” George says. “We’re cousins.” “I’m older so I get more.” A smile creases Jimmy’s round face. A chip is missing from one of his upper front teeth, a souvenir from his father’s fist. “Where’d you get the bottle?” “Papa.” George laughs. “Sure, Uncle Luke just gave it to you.” “I didn’t say he gave it to me. I took it, and then I hitched a ride into town to share it with my favorite cuz.” “You’re in a shitload of trouble.” “No I’m not.” He pulls on the bottle. “Give me a sip.” Jimmy stops. “First you gotta run ten poles.” George looks at the line of weather-beaten wooden power poles that flank the bikeway. Beyond them, open fields merge into the half-finished houses of a new development. “I just ran ten poles.” He points behind him on the path. Jimmy shakes the bottle at his cousin. George is almost a head taller and a lot thinner. “Don’t argue with your coach.” “I already got a coach.” “Yeah, a city boy from back east,” Jimmy says. “Doing his good deed for the Indians.” “Coach Simmons is an O.K. guy. He runs with the team, keeping up most of the time.” “But I’m your cousin.” Jimmy takes another sip. “And I’m your elder, so you gotta listen.” “Ten months older.” “I was premature, born three months too soon. So I’m really more than a year older.” George stops and stares at his cousin. “That doesn’t make sense.” “Sure it does. I was born three months too early. If I was born when I was s’posed to, I’d really be thirteen months older than you.” George knows it’s pointless to argue. “Whatever you say.” They hear voices and turn to look. Two white women in sweat suits head their way. They wear dogged expressions, as if they’re the only two entrants in some fat-woman marathon. The taller of the two casts a wary eye at the boys. Jimmy quickly slips the bottle into his jacket pocket. George moves the cart off the path so the women can pass. He knows it looks odd, he and Jimmy out on the bikeway in the middle of a school day. But he could always say they were on their lunch break. The school allows you to leave for trips to fast-food joints. Most Indian kids stay put to eat the cafeteria’s free lunches. George always did. It gave him enough strength to make it through track practice. And he never knew if he’d get dinner, what with his mom either working nights or out with her new boyfriend. George and Jimmy stand quietly as the women pass by. The one closest to Jimmy cocks her head slightly, probably tempted to see what these Indian boys are up to, suspicious as all-get-out here in broad daylight. But the plump women walk on, picking up the pace. As they pull away, George focuses on their asses. But they wear shapeless, too-big sweat suits and there’s nothing to see. George speaks first. “Those two need to walk a lot of poles if they want to drop some pounds. Hundreds of poles. Thousands, maybe.” “Hop a lot of poles, you mean.” Jimmy guffaws, punches George on the arm. “Get it?” “I got it.” But he doesn’t want to imagine it. Instead, he thinks about the thousands of poles he has passed in his runs all over the county. Miles and miles of power poles. When George was younger, he spent a lot of weekends with Jimmy and his parents out on the Rez. George ran all of the reservation roads. Jimmy’s father tried to warn him away from the practice. “Some drunk’s gonna run you over,” Uncle Luke would say, usually in the evenings after getting toasted in Riverton and driving his sorry self home. Aunt Regina – his mom’s sister – would make a snide comment about Luke being the main drunk to watch out for. The fights would start and George would escape to run. Sometimes he dragged Jimmy along, just to get him out of the house. Jimmy would jog for a half-mile or so, and then slow to a walk. George would run ahead, marking his progress with power poles or cars or some other landmark, and then circle back to report to Jimmy: “five poles” or “twenty cars.” And Jimmy would say, “Do five more, do twenty more,” and George did. Mostly, George ran by himself. In the dark, he ran facing traffic and kept far over on the shoulder, sometimes running through the dry grass. In the summer and fall, when the sun had yet to set, he ran with traffic but still kept his distance from the road. To occupy his mind, George counted the litter in the fields. Soda cans and liquor bottles. Wind litter, too, hung up like ragged flags in the sage: newspapers and plastic trash bags and discarded school assignments from Wyoming Indian High. Jimmy slips the bottle from his pocket, unscrews the top, and drinks. He brings the pint down and hugs it to his chest. “I’m thinkin’ of dropping out, leaving town.” “You only have another year and a half of school.” “But I flunked eighth grade and got kept back. I should be graduating this year. I’m just gonna get a job in the gas fields. Know how much those guys are makin’? Bert Antelope got on before he graduated and he’s making twenty bucks an hour up near Pinedale.” “You’re not eighteen. How you going to get one of those jobs? And you don’t have a car.” “I’m strong,” Jimmy says. He makes a muscle with his bulky right arm. “Not as tall as you but plenty strong.” Jimmy pauses, seems to be contemplating his options. “I hate this place,” he says finally. “Stay in school, graduate, and the Marines will take you.” “Did a lot of good for my father – and yours.” “Join up and maybe they’ll send you to some nice place like Japan, or Italy.” Jimmy laughs. “Indians like me go to Iraq or Afghanistan to kill muj . Papa told me to steer clear of recruiters. Said they will promise you computers and then hand you a rifle. Said that’s what they did to him before they shipped him off to that first Iraq war.” He hesitates, and then says, “I’m not smart like you, cousin.” “I ain’t that smart if I’m skipping school with you and I can’t get anything to drink.” George reaches again for the bottle. Jimmy holds up his hand. “Uh uh,” he says. “First you gotta run those ten poles.” “Ten poles?” “Gotta keep my cousin in shape.” George shrugs. He pushes aside the shopping cart and looks north down the bikeway. The two women are at least three poles down the path. A tall guy on a racing bike is pedaling their way. The cyclist wears an orange helmet. A big gray mustache is pasted on his face. He nods at the boys as he passes. George asks: “Five poles up and five poles back?” “By my calculations, that’s ten poles up and ten poles back.” “That’s twenty poles!” “You can count.” Jimmy bares his chipped-tooth grin. “Screw you.” George takes off on a slow trot, warming up his legs. Ten poles or twenty, it doesn’t matter because I can run any distance any time. As he gains speed, he feels his heart kick into second gear and then third. He can imagine the blood’s path through his body. Like cars on a racetrack, corpuscles jostling to get ahead, to bring George Jumping Bull in ahead of the competition. He passes the third pole and he hasn’t broken a sweat. He detours into the grass to swerve around the walking women, and likes the sound his soles make as they again make contact with the bikeway pavement. The legs of his sweatpants rub together and make a swishing sound. Builds up a rhythm as he runs. Swish-swish, swish-swish, the beat like powwow drums. The sun’s behind him, but he can feel its warmth on his back. He could remove his jacket but then he’d have to carry it. Best just to sweat a little. He can run in shorts and t-shirt almost any day of the year, except those days when bitter Arctic winds howl down from Canada. He can see past the bikeway and the stacked hay bales on distant fields and trailers parked in a row off to his right. He can hear truck traffic over on Highway 26, and the whine of a commuter plane taking off from the town’s small airport. He counts seven poles and then eight. He passes an old woman walking her miniature dog. The dog barks. The woman says, “Hush, Petunia.” Petunia? Pole nine, and when George gets to the tenth pole he just keeps right on running. I’ll show my cousin. Fifteen poles up and fifteen poles back to make it an even thirty. Hell, I could run forty or fifty if I wanted . But he stops at fifteen and turns, again passing the dog lady (yapyapyap) and the walking women and the old guy with the mustache on his return trip. He sees Jimmy in the distance, leaning against the red shopping cart, red so store staff could find them along lonely Rez roads and weedy fields. About this time last year, George received a letter from his father. Letters were rare anyway, but a communication of any kind from his father was the rarest of things. Sidney Jumping Bull, a good grunt in Vietnam – or so they said – but not such a good father. George was only five when he and his mom fled Pine Ridge for Riverton. He had dim memories of his father looking fine as part of the honor guard for powwows and funerals. But after that always came the party, and his father was always in the middle of it, or leading the caravan bound for the liquor stores in Whiteclay (as his mom said, “white people go to hell, Indians go to Whiteclay”). In the letter, his father said he’d stopped drinking after attending a traditional sweat lodge ceremony with some other veterans. He apologized to George, writing that he wanted to make amends for the bad times. His mom – Sidney Jumping Bull’s third (and much younger) wife – received a letter too. She was skeptical, but the two of them planned a July trip to Pine Ridge. Two days before departure, they got a phone call. Sidney Jumping Bull was killed in a car accident on his way to Whiteclay. Sidney had been sober, but the other driver was not. So the trip to Pine Ridge was for a funeral, not reconciliation. When he got home, George donned his sweats and spent the next two weeks running the dirt roads and rugged trails of the Wind Rivers. He ate what he could find, even raided unlocked tourist cars and campground dumpsters. Slept under pine boughs and in caves. One day he ran all the way up Warbonnet Peak. He could see almost all the Rez from up there, and Riverton and the gray Owl Creek Mountains beyond. To the northwest were the pinnacles of the Absarokas. George saw mountains upon mountains marching off into the horizon. Could he run them all? If he did, would he find anything worthwhile on the far side? He watched an airplane, bound for the east, pass high overhead. Other planes, headed west and south, creased the sky. An eagle rode the thermals, turning gracefully in the warm summer air. The eagle screeched, and George heard his own name. He thought he might be in the midst of a vision, the kind the elders talked about. But later, as he looked back, he knew that it was probably more hunger than spirit, his body dropping weight faster than he could feed it. He sat up there for the longest time, until a thunderstorm had forced him off the high ground and he ran back down the mountain, with lightning chasing him the whole way. George pulls up a few feet short of his cousin. Hands on hips, breathing moderately hard, he walks loops around Jimmy. When his breathing returns to normal, he stops in front of Jimmy and says, “Thirty poles.” Jimmy grins. His eyes are unfocused, his face a puffy mask. “From this day forward, George Jumping Bull will be known as George Running Poles.” “Yes, oh wise elder.” Jimmy guffaws and holds up the bottle. Less than an inch of clear liquid sloshes around at the bottom. George grabs the bottle and unscrews the top. As he brings it up to his mouth, the vodka’s odor invades his nose. It burns his throat going down. He pushes the bottle back at his cousin. Jimmy snags the bottle. “What’s with you?” “Sorry,” George says, rubbing his nose. “It burns.” “We’ve been drinking before.” “Beer, though. Not vodka.” Jimmy tips the bottle and drains it. He tosses the empty into the weeds along the bikeway. “Whoa.” He wobbles, leans against the shopping cart to get his balance. “I think I need a ride.” Jimmy throws his right leg over the side of the cart. He grabs the sides and pushes but doesn’t get very far as his left hand slips its grip. “Whoa.” He pushes again, balances briefly with one leg in and one out, and the cart begins to fall. George grabs it and pushes it upright. “Thanks, cousin,” Jimmy says. He swings in the other leg and lurches backwards in the cart. George gets behind the cart. He looks down at Jimmy’s Raiders’ ballcap – its bill turned cockeyed, worn like big-city rappers. His older cousin looks like a little kid crouched in the shopping cart. They roll out of the grass and onto the path. He and Jimmy have nowhere to go for two hours until George’s mom goes to work and they can hang out at his place. “Let’s go get something to eat.” Jimmy waves a beat-up leather wallet. “You have money?” “Papa does – this is his wallet.” Jimmy laughs. “Damn, Jimmy, Uncle Luke will kick your ass.” “No he won’t,” he says. “He won’t do that ever again.” George stops. “What are you saying, Jimmy?” “You know what I’m saying.” Jimmy’s voice is stern, yet distant. “I just couldn’t take another punch. Know what I mean?” “What happened?” George asks. “An accident, right? A fight, right? You punched him and he fell and banged his head? Maybe you just knocked him out.” “Nah,” says Jimmy. “I cut him. He’d dead.” “Maybe he’s… “ “Ain’t no maybe, cousin.” Jimmy keeps his head lowered, talking into his jeans. “He was drunk, I was faster.” Jimmy pauses. “It was once too often, you know?" George knows. Uncle Luke has battered his way through his family, even hit George more than once, back when he was little and couldn’t run away. But now George can fly from danger, run back to the mountains and keep running. Jimmy isn’t equipped with the gift of speed. He can stand and fight – he was tough after all. But what good had it done? He was alive – a good thing – but his daddy wasn’t. “Push us down to the store for some food,” Jimmy says. He waves his father’s wallet again. “Watching you run made me hungry.” George turns the cart and pushes it down the bikeway toward the convenience store. He wants to run, just jump over the cart and head up to the hills. Tension builds in his legs, just as it does before a race. But he can’t run away from his cousin, not now. George pushes Jimmy down the path, taking one pole at a time, counting as he goes. This story was a breakthrough because it caught the attention of writers I admire and forced me to keep at it. I wrote it after getting stuck for two days by winter-closed roads surrounding Riverton, Wyoming. The bike path was cleared but surrounded by snow. I walked the path and came across two young Native American teens. One rested in a grocery store shopping cart. He hugged a liquor bottle. The other pushed him. I asked myself, What are those two guys doing on the bikepath on a school day? I wrote the story and submitted it, but no takers. I sent it for critiques at the Jackson Hole Writers’ Conference and got helpful comments from John Byrne Cook, Tim Sandlin, and Craig Johnson. Cooke liked it because it was about real people doing real things and not more self-absorbed fiction from MFA grads (I’m one). Cooke liked that I challenged myself to write about another culture, to imagine myself in their lives. He edited the story and urged me to submit it to The New Yorker . I did and got a quick rejection. After more rejections and rewrites, I submitted it to an anthology, Blood, Water, Wind and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press, 2016), and it was accepted. Previous MICHAEL SHAY's shorter works have appeared in New Flash Fiction Review , Silver Birch Press , and In Short: A Norton anthology of Brief Creative Nonfiction . He is the author of a book of short stories, The Weight of a Body (Ghost Road Press, 2006), and a historical novel, Zeppelins over Denver , forthcoming from The Ridgeway Press. Mike is a Colorado native who spent 33 years in Wyoming and now lives in Florida. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE AWFUL THING Christina Robertson My mother, Liz Carthage, was used to looking great. She’s an ex-dancer, married for forty years to a successful art dealer. She had adopted a kind of chic built upon exposure to interesting shapes and ideas. Elastic waist pants and cotton/poly sweatshirts were not part of her wardrobe as they are now. Not that she’d notice the difference, but I decided to bring her stockings and a new blouse today, and after searching her drawers, managed to track down a pair of earrings that matched. She tries to put her hands in the stockings now, thinking they’re gloves, but she holds perfectly still while I comb back her hair and pin it, and apply a dab of color to her dispirited lips. Despite her general confusion, she seems to have a deeply embedded recognition of what we are doing. That is to say, she nods and seems pleased. The woman who attends the holiday party won’t be the cosmopolitan of yore, no, not the head turner she once was, but will be, without doubt, the most attractive woman in the Day Room. I remember her dressed to go out with my father to an opening, smelling powdery and lovely, in a bottle green hourglass dress, her dark hair swept back in a sleek chignon. I think of her even before that, before she was Lizzy to my father, Peter. I like to think of her as the woman who wanted to be prima ballerina, but was to become my mother; a young dancer with aspirations and flaws, who likely didn’t look or smell so perfect after six hours in the studio, her feet bleeding through nearly shredded pointe shoes. That woman was separate from me. She was a heartbroken woman seated in an orthopedic surgeon’s office, a woman bewildered as to what to do next if she could no longer dance. She was the woman who, soon after, found the rabbit had died and came to the realization that she was in possession of the seed for another sort of creative life. Now she knows herself only in fragmented refractions. Left to her own devices, she’s a mess, adrift on a sea of holes. She’s the product of neurological devastation and, in a cruel ironic twist, my salvage. I have become the mother. As we approach the Day Room, I feel pride at what remains of her dancer’s posture. That quickly fades into the sad reality before us. Surveying the gathering, I see that Liz Carthage is just another entry in the turtle races, the only difference being that I’d painted her shell. Gentlemen, such as Harmon, are wearing crooked bow ties and have their hair plastered down as if they are in first grade, circa 1935. Ladies’ hair has been sculpted into virtual helmets in shades of peach and beige and ice blue. They are wearing their best faux pearls, their least stained shirts, their old leisure suits. All in safe heels or dismal slippers, all at a loss for what they are celebrating. My mother had been living on 4 West for nearly a year when the Reverend Harmon Triplett arrived. She didn’t (and still doesn’t) know anybody on the unit, not the staff nor the other residents, but this is because she has advanced Alzheimer’s Disease. Most of her “neighbors” on 4 West don’t know her either. Frequently they reintroduce themselves as they pass each other in their never-ending loops of the hallway. The formality is touching, as if they are forever trying to make a good impression. The day Harmon Triplett was brought to the unit, I had just finished combing my mother’s hair, which I often find limp at her shoulders. She still insists on dying it black, though she hasn’t fooled anyone in decades with that. Still, if we don’t keep coloring her hair, don’t take care of those white roots, she has been known to attempt to do it herself—with mascara, eyebrow pencil, even pen. Blue pen. I helped her choose a top to go with her brown polyester pants and a necklace that probably belongs to someone else here, and put a smudge of lipstick on those thinning lips. The makeup thing is more for myself than for her. It is similar to putting candles on a cake, a hopeful contrivance, a fantastical effort toward making a wish come true. The Reverend Triplett was to be moved into Room 18 on the “Green Wing.” My mother is in 2 Yellow, just across from the elevators. When the doors opened, and the Tripletts stepped tentatively out, a familiar aroma came wafting up through the elevator shaft. If ever an odor can make you feel as though you are swimming with rocks in your pockets, it’s nursing home turkey loaf and creamed corn. The family still smelled of the autumn world outside. I wished I could bottle it for them. Belle, the charge nurse, employed her well-rehearsed congeniality in greeting the Tripletts. She was all warmth and breeziness as she had been with us a year ago, and dispersed assurances all around like air freshener. The Reverend was a big man, more than six feet, and had retained the sturdy bones and musculature of his younger days, though it was apparent gravity and illness were conspiring against him. He stammered in an effort to reply and seemed embarrassed that he couldn’t say what he sensed he was supposed to. He shook his head and laughed, handing the whole exchange off to his adult daughter to navigate. I’d liked the look of them, Triplett and his daughter. They were unexpectedly earthy. I don’t know why I automatically assign stereotypical attributes to ministers. Like they all use Ivory soap and sing hymns in the shower, and display exemplary moderation in their approach to everything. As if they are thoroughly benign beings, plain donuts. Reverend Triplett’s Birkenstocks and faded shirt were retro-hip, and the small paunch resting on his belt looked as though it came from drinking good beer. He had a boyish, almost mischievous, smile and prominent cheekbones, evident in his carelessly beautiful daughter as well. His heavy thatch of hair was snow-white. All in all, his appearance was that of a kindly king in humble disguise, a hero out of a storybook. I was instantly fond of him without knowing anything about him. If his presence had that effect on me, it seemed to awaken an even stronger response in my mother. She approached the group, staring up at the Reverend from her height a good foot below him and quietly took hold of my hand, an expression of what appeared to be dismay and relief on her face, as if she had been waiting for him. “This, him, it’s upping. I am going up. I have haunting in here,” she said to me and pointed at her heart. Belle reached out for my mother, drawing her petite body into the fold. As she did, the Reverend’s wife appeared out of nowhere or maybe from his shadow. She was also small, with a broad, concerned face and arthritic hands. Her wiry hair was growing out from years of dark brown dye and her hastily applied rouge deepened the creases in her cheeks. She was introduced to us as Gail. She acknowledged us graciously and grasped her husband’s arm. “This here is Ms. Carthage. But we call her Liz, don’t we?” Belle gave my mother’s shoulder a squeeze. She responded like an eager child. “Ms. Liz, this is Reverend Triplett. He’s joining our community here.” Everyone was cordial, except perhaps Mrs. Triplett whose smile began to tremble. She was, after all, about to leave her husband on a locked dementia ward, hardly the “community” she’d been dreaming of for their retirement. Of course it could have been due to the fact that my mother and Harmon Triplett were looking at each other like Maria and Tony at the dance in West Side Story. The Reverend had enveloped my mother’s hand in both of his huge bear paws. He was a man well past his prime, but the strength in his hands was definitely still pulsing. Neither spoke beyond a polite murmur, still, if this wasn’t my eighty-year old mother who tried to put socks on over shoes, I would have said there was electricity there. His daughter Laurel and I introduced ourselves to break the ridiculous tension. I wasn’t sure if she was reading things the same way I was, but the arch in her eyebrows told me she was. I created a quick diversion, ushering my mother around the corner into the Day Room where, I had insisted, she had wanted to join the others watching a Sing Along with Mitch video. I could feel Gail Triplett’s eyes on us as we left. Facing the opposite direction, my mother had already forgotten the Reverend, but Mrs. Triplett likely hadn’t forgotten my mother. That night, about nine o’clock, I received a call at home from the evening nurse, Carin. After lights out, she reported, my mother must have gotten up and wandered out into the hallway, seeking god knows what. Harmon Triplett was also awake, also anxious over his inexplicable surroundings. They were found sitting side by side on the glider at the end of the Blue Wing under the moonlit window. They were holding hands, my mother’s head on his shoulder. Seeing my mother and Harmon Triplett over the next several visits, receiving the obligatory notifications from staff that she and he had had to be separated, that they had found him missing from his room in the middle of the night and discovered asleep in the vacant second bed in my mother’s room, that she trailed along like a stray dog, distressing Mrs. Triplett during her visits, began to make sense in a primitive sort of way. Their affinity, despite the inability to communicate coherently with each other, had taken on substance. I’d begun to get it. There was something compelling in Harmon Triplett that reminded me of a fairy tale hero, but also, unaccountably, of my father. Alzheimer’s Disease is the Ash Borer of the human experience. Slowly, determinedly, its toxic plaques wind in and disrupt the flow of neurological signals, all that informs people about their own lives. They are gradually hollowed. Sapped of what they know in order to thrive, then even to survive in the world, these people become a shell. The shell is affected too; shapes and contours distorting, falling prey to repetitive pacing, lost teeth that they hadn’t realized were decaying, then lost dentures, poor eating habits, fractures from falls or walking into things. All form of mysterious bruise and lump, mirroring the scratches and dents, pre-4 West, they had been shocked to “discover” in their cars, dents they hadn’t any idea about. I am finding the experience terrifyingly similar to what I imagine it would be like to witness my mother drown. I stand on the shore and throw ropes to her, but she has no idea what to do with them. I try to swim to her, but she only moves farther away. I bring in family photo albums and we go over and over the old faces. Sometimes they set a spark off in her darkening mind and she smiles. Other times she shakes her head forlornly, or in utter consternation, pointing at a pink-faded picture of my dapper father, and asks, “What is that doing?” I opt then for the answer that might give her momentary peace of mind, He’s coming later, after the gallery closes. There was a day, after Harmon had settled in, that I came toting the albums, but she wasn’t in her room. After a quick sweep of the Day Room and the nurses’ office, I went in search of Belle. And there I found my mother. She was in a chair in Mr. Klein’s room, blocked by the Nurse’s ample hips, looking slightly annoyed. “I’m keeping her with me,” Belle said. I had come to read nuances in Belle’s tone. There was a problem. “She’s helping me make my med rounds…it seemed like a better idea than spoiling the Reverend’s visit with his wife.” She raised an eyebrow, then chuckled off the whole state of affairs while dosing Mr. Klein with Aricept. My mother looked cross. “Oh boy…again?” I said. “It’s nice to go to vote out there.” My mother tensed her jaw and gazed out into the hall. “Honey she loves that man! It’s gonna come to no good I think.” Belle shook her head. I wasn’t surprised. I’d caught her myself, two days before, in the green wing, ten paces behind the Tripletts, her hands relaxed behind her back as she strolled, not particularly focused upon Harmon or his wife, simply enjoying a parrot’s constitutional. She’d gazed up at the banal, nostalgic prints fixed to the walls, as if they were flowering trees along a parkway. If someone else passed, she nodded politely. If the Tripletts stopped, she stopped as well, evidently satisfied just to follow in his wake. I took my mother from Belle’s supervision back to her room. The plastic mattress cover made a crunching sound as we sat on her bed. She had no interest in the photo album or the chocolate I brought. Instead she was turning over my hand, examining my nails, saying, “Those cans are floosh.” I pulled a book from her bedside shelf, a book of Brancusi sculptures that had been one of her favorites back in her real life. Just then there was a gentle knock at the door. I looked up to see the medical director, Dr. Voss, edging her way into the room. Behind her, Harmon was maneuvering to gain entry and Joyce, an aide, was trying to entice him away. It had to be something important to bring Dr. Voss up here outside her monthly round of the unit. Of course, I had a hunch. The doctor is a smallish woman in big heels, besieged by freckles she tries to hide with makeup. She was clutching a stack of files against herself like a shield and smiled politely at Harmon before closing the door on him. Joining us for some together time on the plastic bed, she tilted her head sympathetically. I felt my back molars ache. “Can we talk?” “Of course,” I nodded. “It’s come to my attention that your mom has been a little more…agitated…lately,” Dr. Voss began, setting her files on her lap. “The fact is, the Triplett family is a little concerned .” Her credentials swayed on her lanyard as she gave my mother’s shoulder a folksy rub. “I think hearing that the Reverend had pulled his pants down in her room last night might have done it.” Until then I had been distracted by the way she held her foot, flexed, when she crossed her legs, the heel of her shoe spiking out menacingly. Suddenly we were staring at each other in an accord of alarm and suppressed laughter. “What?” How could I not have heard about this one? “The staff report says that when Joyce came in to do her eleven o’clock well-being check, your mother was asleep and the Reverend was in the room taking off his pajamas. This wasn’t the first time they’ve been caught.” “Wait a minute, ‘caught ’?” It took effort to tamp down irritation. “I doubt very much that either are capable of anything premeditated.” I tried to take any sharp edges out of my voice. A moment of silence followed. I looked at my mother. There was no reasoning with her about this. She wasn’t following the conversation. She looked at me, politely smiling as if I were a slightly boring guest. “What do we do now?” I said. “I need your permission. I’d like to tweak her meds,” Voss said. Tweak always meant add. “Really? She’s not hurting anyone. She’s definitely not any more confused. In fact, on some level, she seems pretty clear. It’s… almost like an improvement.” I shot back, forcing a little levity. She smiled weakly. “I have an obligation here. Gail Triplett has asked me to intervene.” “I guess I can imagine that. My mom is giving her a run for her money.” More silence, though I’m convinced Dr. Voss wanted to laugh. I kept my eyes on her. “What about Harmon? Will he be prescribed a little saltpeter with his meals?” I knew I’d officially stepped out of line with that one, but the doctor let it go. “I would really like to avoid loading her up with more drugs,” I said. “She’s already taking enough medication to sideline a football player.” This elicited a cautious, but respectful nod. The nursing home had rules and standards, but I had Power of Attorney and the checkbook. My mother was trying to eat a wadded-up Kleenex. When I took it from her, I realized there was a cookie wrapped inside. She looked sublimely happy when I gave it to her. “I like quickies!” she said taking a bite. It was decided that, when at all possible, a staff member would sit outside both my mother’s and Harmon’s rooms at night, and my mother would spend the Triplett visits in the nurses’ office with Belle or Carin or whomever was available. This, we agreed, would carry us through the holiday, and with luck, would disrupt the pattern enough to end the “affair." And, for a while it worked. This afternoon’s New Year’s Eve party is in the Day Room. Occasions here are typically observed with shiny cardboard decorations, themed cookies, and Blue Cow ice cream cups. However, today the Day Room is particularly festive. They are serving non-alcoholic champagne, fruit punch out of a crystalline bowl, and pizza. Awkwardly draped “Happy New Year!” crepe paper banners, silver plastic ware, streamers, and white balloons force a kind of undeniable, if manufactured, cheer upon us. Many have donned glittery party hats and hold onto noise makers. The gala began at four, making us fashionably late. Adherence to a schedule is kind of ironic since the staff and visitors are the only ones with any concept of time. The staff are good humored, loose and giddy, the music an amicable compromise of golden oldies—the likes of Glenn Miller and The Andrews Sisters—and the best of Earth Wind & Fire. Carin and Beatrice from Housekeeping are dancing with each other and any of the spit-shined residents they can coax up out of a chair. Visiting family members coax as well, or sit dutifully beside their vacant mother, father, sister, brother, or spouse, trying to share the mock excitement, or perhaps just trying not to cry. I can’t bear to look at the sallow faces of those residents who are totally lost, are petrified wood with beating hearts. Instead I paste on a smile and step aside, allowing my mother to make her entrance with the dramatic flair of her youth. It’s been two weeks since the pants incident, and a full week since any “improprieties” have been filed by the staff. As far as I know, equilibrium—as defined by no one dropping their pants—has been restored on 4West. All we have to contend with is…everything else. My mother glances at me, then toddles into the sea of dithering revelers, a twig wearing red lipstick. In his aged, graying body with its slight jowls and sags, Harmon’s eyes shine like polished onyx when he sees my mother. He is sitting in the circle of chairs with his wife who holds onto his hand. Laurel is standing nearby, talking with the nurse’s assistant Joyce, and nibbling at a square of waxen-looking pizza. Quivering and quaking, he suddenly makes an effort to rise. They are playing Moonlight Serenade . Observing her father’s sudden effort to stand, Laurel reaches for him, helping him up into a dance. She hasn’t noticed my mother’s arrival, and Harmon seems to have promptly forgotten it. He looks down at his daughter with a warm, slightly vacant expression. Gail watches them together, her face frozen in better times, her knobby hands folded pleasantly in the lap of her burgundy tweed skirt. Having declined a party hat, the stretch of silver roots at her part gleams beneath the florescent ceiling lights. It underscores a vulnerability, her irreversible journey. At the same time, I can’t help noticing a strangely threatening flicker in her gaze as it eventually comes to rest on her rival. My mother is, of course, oblivious. A change in rhythm introduces the Chattanooga Choo Choo and Davis, the activities coordinator, charms my mother onto the “dance floor.” She grins as she is led in and her confused mind is reunited with this familiar tune. She picks up the beat and, leaning to and fro, jazzing it up, she shows him the correct steps as they come back to her. It is a known phenomenon that people with dementia seem to recall and respond to music—especially of their youth—with mysterious clarity not available to them otherwise. I watch Gail watching her. The envy is unmistakable. As the music downshifts to Nat King Cole’s I Love You for Sentimental Reasons , her husband begins making his way from Laurel to my mother. Gail gets up from her chair. Nervous, I start toward my mother. It’s painfully obvious she’s on the path to certain conflict. But Davis grabs me, whirls me, then snaps me back in, apparently determined to show off what my mother and a few of the other ambulatory ladies have taught him. Meanwhile, I watch Harmon take my mother in his big shaky arms, her little head barely coming to the center of his chest. He doesn’t look clean, but she burrows her cheek into him. They couldn’t have been more besotted had they been seventeen. Joyce looks at Laurel, Laurel looks at me. Before I can free myself, Davis dips me and I almost end up on the floor. Clutching at him, feeling annoyed and more than a little ridiculous, I get a tilted view of Gail attempting to pry the id-driven lovers apart. “No! Go…there!” my mother protests. “This is my husband.” Gail Triplett tries to say with patience. “My husband,” she repeats, pressing her hands to her heart. “No,” my mother says, shaking her head slowly, as if Gail is the deluded one. “This is the one for me.” More coherence than I’ve heard from her in months. Harmon smiles at her with idiotic devotion. The tape leaps into a groove by Earth Wind and Fire and he bobs clumsily in time. Say that you remember dancing in September… “Harmon…sit down,” Gail instructs. Harmon blinks, trying to figure out what is happening. Then, cooperative as a spaniel, he complies, taking my mother with him. “Let go of her hand honey,” Gail says, patience diminishing. “I want my wife,” he answers, clearly concerned that this woman with the silver streak is trying to pull a fast one. “I’m your wife, Harmon…I am .” He doesn’t look convinced. Love was changing the mind of pretenders…chasing the clouds away My mother is on fire now. She is in Gail’s face. “This, you…it’s a bad cookie!” Everyone freezes. I shake Davis off. Remember how we knew love… “You don’t even know what you are saying. Get away—shoo !” Gail flicks her hand. “You’re sick !” Laurel swoops in, her smile desperate, trying to de-escalate things. With extra-drippy deference she asks my mother to show her some of those dance steps. My mother, adrenaline pulsing, musters the presence of mind to be disgusted. She ignores Laurel and turns away. Tere is a collective exhale from the staff. Then, abruptly, she swings around and slaps Mrs. Triplett across the face. “Shuume!” she says in a voice quivering with rage. No one insults Liz’s intelligence and escapes unscathed. Ba duda, ba duda… Without realizing it, Laurel and I have grabbed onto each other. There is a throbbing heat in my face, a rapid sinking in my heart. Shaken, Gail falls into her chair. Laurel rushes to her. Joyce goes for an ice pack. Belle lures my mother away with the offer of ice cream and an extra dose of Ativan written all over her face. The unit social worker appears as if summoned from a magic lamp and officiates damage control. Daughter of the damned, I stand by wordlessly, like another balloon. Not able to track all this, poor, addled Harmon appears only mildly stunned. He pets his wife’s head as she begins to weep. “Good,” he says. The party is over for my mother. She’s served a tranquilizer with a cup of Hawaiian Punch in her room. I’m frightened, baffled, outraged, mortified, and, in the distant ozone layer of my mind, proud, the emotional cacophony that is the Alzheimer’s theme song. I know I owe the Triplett family an apology, but can’t really hang my hat on why. Blame seems pointless. Like blaming two goldfish for swimming in the same direction in their bowl. I sit at my mother’s bedside in my party hat, watching her fall asleep, knowing when she wakes it will be a new year. It will always be the same year for her. Before she closes her eyes she says, “You are a swede baby.” My tears rise. Later, and with the profound sadness that can only exist on a holiday, I punch in the pass code for the elevator down to the lobby. I’m retreating, deserting, going home. As usual, shame lurks just behind relief. My grief tonight is a dark heat though, the dying embers of a forest fire. Strains of an old Lawrence Welk Hour tape running on the TV in the Day Room don’t help. Just as I am settling into a deep loneliness, Laurel startles me, poking her head around the corner. She has a positive urgency and flashes an impish grin. Her eyes are like her father’s. “I’ve been waiting for you!” she says, approaching. Mournfully I surrender. “You probably want a piece of me…” I answer, mostly in jest. She laughs. I’ve gotten good at diversions. “I truly apologize! It’s crazy…I don’t know why this is happening.” I am lying only a little. “Please tell me your mother is doing…better.” I wince, embarrassed at the inadequacy of my words. “She’s alright. Really.” Laurel reassures me. “Yours?” “Wow. Kind of you to ask. She’s asleep…Ativan.” Her eyes brim. As if she, herself, has shot my mother with elephant tranquilizer. “It had to be.” I concede, though I can’t deny my emotions around this are still raw. “You know,” Laurel begins, “I’ve been thinking and, well, I guess I’m not feeling like it’s an awful thing... that your mother is drawn to my dad, and he…” She paused, “ to her.” We are both silent as we mull this over, blind acceptance being our only shot at adapting. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I mean, does it? So my mom thinks he’s Gregory Peck, that isn’t so terrible.” Our limp smiles surrender to the miserable humor of it all. “Exactly,” she says. “I don’t care…I’m glad, in fact.” I can’t help but think of poor Mrs. Triplett. “But what about…” I say. “My mom?” Laurel says. “I’ll get her to understand. Or I won’t.” There is a ding and the elevator door slides open. A catatonic resident, crusty with spilled food, is wheeled out by a clearly depleted family member. We make way, and at that moment we both know the awful thing here isn’t love. The call I get later from the evening shift is to alert me to the fact that Harmon and my mother have been “caught” together trying to figure out the elevator pass code. They were trying numbers and naming saints. Then, the staff reports, they kissed and wandered away into the blue wing in search of, well, something. Maybe the moon. "The Awful Thing" was published in Bellevue Literary Review . In this story, two dementia patients on a locked ward in a nursing home fall in love. The families involved, including a living spouse, must find a way to accept an incomprehensible, seemingly unacceptable new reality. Acceptance comes in the form of an assessment of what is and is not the truly awful thing here. Previous CHRISTINA ROBERTSON is a half-Greek agnostic tree lover, a former therapist and ex-floral designer, a writer, and a bit of a divining rod for the absurdity beneath so many of life’s darker moments. Living just outside Chicago, her professional background in psychiatric settings ignited a fascination for nature's terrible and fragile beauty as it exists within people, which informs her writing. As a member of the long-running Off Campus Writers Workshop and Fred Shafer’s short story workshop, Christina's Pushcart-nominated short fiction has appeared in Pleiades , Bellevue Literary Review , and Tahoma Literary Review , among others. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THIS HORSE IS THE BOSS OF ME Mike Wilson An opening in the ground in my chest opens a box that opens another world bigger clear, silver, and empty like Montana. # Steel spurs on my boots are for show: the barest motion sends the horse galloping through frictionless pixelation intimate as my retina. This mind-blind land is beyond my ken. I trust the horse to carry me where I should go. "This Horse is the Boss of Me" describes breaking through to the other side, as Jim Morrison put it, where desire carries us through a land we normally cannot see. Previous MIKE WILSON 'S work has appeared in many magazines and in his book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020). Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue FIRST RESPONDER Mike Wilson There’s an active shooter on the end of the bar armed with cigarettes and Singapore Slings. If I step forward, she steps back falling into empty arms that do not catch. Help, she cries. She’s wearing a suicide vest packed with low self-esteem. Even if I pull the cord, she says, no one will hear me go bang . I put my hands over my ears. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse circle her skull like Indians around a covered wagon, shooting a barrage of arrows that make access impossible except by a SWAT team of angels. She hopes. The rocks cry out Who is accountable? The spider eyes of the universe look at me. I send her doves inside the breath of my breath. I pry her fingers from the gun. Hold still , I say, while I patch that broken heart. "First Responder" was published in Heroin Love Songs. In this poem, the narrator breaks through the defenses of a woman in a bar. Previous MIKE WILSON 'S work has appeared in many magazines and in his book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020). Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue NO MORE BLOWS David Romtvedt First the dog died and we pulled the sledge ourselves. A couple of centuries later a wheel fell off the cart and another millennium gone by, the pistons started to knock, rings worn, fuel to air mix off. When they landed, the aliens promised peace beyond understanding. You think a civilization able to cross space and time can fix anything, think again. In the end it was, “Sorry, we’ve done all we can,” stepping back into their ship and closing the door, tears in their eyes. That was a surprise, seeing the aliens cry. As a child, if I cried, my father beat me, saying, as so many fathers before him have said, “You wanta cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.” Confused, I came to hate not what he’d done to me, but crying. Later, I too was a father. When my daughter, suffering from severe colic, cried, I wanted to strike out, not knowing at what, having worked so hard to forget my childhood, afraid I might hit my daughter as my father had hit me. I turned away and left the house, walking across the frozen lake, the windblown surface free of snow, the fish moving silently beneath my feet. Sometimes in the cold, things come clear— my daughter cried and I heard my father’s ragged breathing, recoiled from his blow, but this time I stepped aside, and never again feared I might hit my child. In understanding why my daughter’s or anyone’s crying so disturbed me, I was to some degree freed from my father’s blows and so never again feared that I might lose control and hit my daughter. I also understood that the aliens had to leave, that no outside force could solve my problems. Finally, I accepted that even if I were not ruled by the association between tears and being beaten that I’d made in childhood, crying might always make me uncomfortable. Previous DAVID ROMTVEDT is from northern Wyoming. His most recent books are Still on Earth (LSU Press, 2025) and Forest of Ash: The Earliest Written Basque Poetry (Center for Basque Studies Press, 2024). davidromtvedt.com Next

You Oughta Know by Brock Dethier Addiction fools the best of us: you smell the bait, acknowledge the hook, sniff it, flick it, tongue the steel point, but can’t guess how sharp the barb, how stealth its set. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue A short poem with a hook. I like to have a single metaphor carry the poem’s meanings, and I like to write poems that might affect readers’ lives. I targeted the arrogance of young people who think they are too smart and aware to get addicted. I’m proud to say that the teenage daughter I wrote the poem for is now almost 30 and almost completely clean and sober... though I’m sure the bad examples around her influenced her more than my poem. Sugar House Review published this poem and reprinted it on a promotional card. .................................................................................................................................................................................... Next - The Black Flies of Home by Brock Dethier Next BROCK DETHIER retired from Utah State University after directing the writing composition program for 11 years. His publications include From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music (Heinemann, 2003), First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers (Utah State University Press, 2005), Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them (Utah State University Press, 2013), and two books of poetry, Ancestor Worship (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015).

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue FOUND Shari Zollinger I entered psychedelic space for the first time with a microdose. Alice, who once fell through, was offered a red pill or a blue one. Adriana offered me gray green on the morning of an eclipse. My body clearly and without hesitation chose which dose (a tiny bite of a tiny piece of filigree fibrous cap) and which environment (supine on a brown leather couch in the middle of the living room with the Moab red rock desert reflecting through). Time travel was/wasn’t possible? Eyes closed. What if we’ve left parts of ourselves out there, along the continuum? What if the cold-framed window in the Taipei, Taiwan hospital waiting room still existed and she was still waiting there looking out at the night? What if, along that continuum, there were points where it was possible to make changes? Scroll back along the thread-gauzy timeline, web-filamented, to check for the nodes that need attention. In astrological terminology, eclipses were both omen and boon. We don’t know if this is true, yet it seems to hold across the timeline when we’re looking for possible wormholes, when we’re bending back toward where she sat waiting. Where she’d waited a long time. It was a surprise to see her there. Had it been 15 or 20 years since she’d gone to the Taipei hospital to seek assurance, wondering how fast and furious the body breaks, how quickly the psyche can sit down like a cipher without language sturdy enough for meaning? It was a thing to recognize her. Wonder how she’d passed the time. How many names for the color of night she had coined and counted out that window. Did she always know someone would return for her? Did she count time or build mnemonics or hear the distinct click of a metronome reminding her that she wasn’t exactly alone? And how did she know what to do? The first thing—to walk out into the sunlight that was there beyond the hospital night, because it could be there because she was found in-continuum where narrative couldn’t demand length or cord or fibrous linearity, where the weather could change every second and day and night could click in time with the metronome. Sunlight came to her skin first as fire. And she said watch as her body burned down like an incense cone starting with her head, a thousand points of ash scrolling down her frame as she gave herself permission to translate into a substance that the wind could move. And finally, she moved. Each piece companioned to the unseen. And she said the thing I didn’t know then was that it was okay to let a piece of me die. It was okay to blow away. She left a small diamond on the concrete sidewalk outside the hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. I took the carbon remnant in hand—returned to the brown leather couch, to Moab, the supine position, my own unmoving body making its way from closed eyes to open where I saw red rocks obscured by night. "Found" was written after attending a lecture on the lyric essay, a medium I'd been curious about but hadn't spent much time with as a writer. I've enjoyed exploring the genre, defining and redefining its framework to fit the needs of my writing. It was a breakthrough to crossover into this form, and the piece itself was written at the crossroads between breakdown and breakthrough. Previous SHARI ZOLLINGER is a Salt Lake City-based poet, essayist, and bookseller whose work examines memory, place, and the traces we leave in both landscape and life. She currently reads for Sugar House Review and has spent 25 years in independent bookselling as a buyer and community advocate for literary programs. Her work has appeared in Sugar House Review , Redactions: Poetry & Prose , The Shore Poetry , and Ephemeral Magazine. sharizollinger.substack.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue EXHALING CAREFULLY Christina Robertson Steadying his hand wasn’t easy, but the coffee was blazes and Robert didn’t want to scald himself. He found he could sometimes hold off the shakes, which still came and went, by taking a deep, slow breath. Unfortunately, taking a deep breath just made him crave a cigarette. Slowly, cautiously, using both hands, he set his stained china mug down on the brick ledge of the back stair landing and reached for his pack of Kents. He took one out with his teeth, returning the pack in one elegant motion to the lower pocket of the canvas flak jacket he wore. He’d unearthed the crazy thing, an old Gunga Din costume piece, from his basement storage unit, thinking it might be useful. Quitting drinking was a bitch. He needed all the firepower he could muster for this battle. Hard candy (he found Lemonheads surprisingly effective), a small sketchbook, the remaining half of a Faber-Castell 4B pencil. Cigarettes, for sure. He wouldn’t be giving those up anytime soon. The jacket had enough pockets for everything, even a small patch the right size for the smooth jade “worry stone” Solveig had given him upon his release from the atrocious county detox center, when, somewhat cavalierly he thought, she’d agreed to become his sponsor. Of course, she was pretty woo woo, but dammit, he had to admit rubbing the daft little thing with his thumb was rather soothing. He stood erect on the landing, chin up, skillfully, meditatively drawing off his cigarette and exhaling carefully, as if delivering a delicate brushstroke onto a canvas or letting go of a child’s hand as she takes her first step. He was observing the young woman, Radha… or was it Rasha (he’d been told at some point, but hadn’t really been paying attention), hanging laundry to dry on the pitiful second floor landing across the alley. An array of small white t-shirts and larger sleeveless ones, mostly. She called and her little boy came bursting outside with extra clothes pins. He fixed his gaze on Robert, a familiar face, and at his mother’s prompting, waved. A wiry, antelope-eyed little guy. Robert hammed it up, saluting back. As she moved, the woman’s sari, a deep malachite green, fluttered in a lovely way. However, as she worked it, the ancient pulley mechanism (indeed he couldn’t believe this antiquity still existed) squeaked, killing his reverie, replacing it with irritation. The boy disappeared, answering the call of an onerous voice from within. Robert put out his cigarette. He was supposed to be working on filler cartoons for a couple of trade magazines, locking down a piddling check or two. He was moved instead to portray Radha—as a revelation, the way she ought to be, no dreary undershirts, no weathered gray porch, no torn window screens. Pastels were the mood: lots of burnt sienna, blue-green, and gold. She didn’t know, never would, that she was actually Princess Devi, “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Well, at least considered so by LIFE Magazine a few decades ago. By noon he had three decent portraits (the more loosely-rendered his favorite), barely a nub of sienna left and ink stains on his fingers. This flight had left him with a mean thirst for a bit of the devil. He needed to make it to four o’clock. That is when the dried-up losers club, to which he has ostensibly recommitted himself, meets over in the church gym. There he would enjoy a donut and ease his mind, focusing on some other poor schmuck’s problems. And maybe, though jury was still out on this, unload a few of his own. There had been a growing list of frustrations, Robert had to admit. For one thing, people were being nice. He found it particularly grating in his encounters with his typically disapproving downstairs neighbor Mrs. Georgioulis and Mrs. Cudjer, the janitor’s overly-solicitous wife (Cudjer himself wouldn’t speak to him since he’d set a small fire in his apartment). Word had gotten around the building that Robert Galen, alcoholic has-been artist, had finally hit rock bottom. Whereas he would’ve thrown his ass right out on the street, they were attempting to buoy him with grotesquely unoriginal platitudes. “It’s the first day of the rest of your life, Galen.” It takes a village. Swallowing the annoyance, he exercised basic decency toward them, just resented having to squander that capital on unimaginative do-gooders. Their sunniness gave him a headache. He was convinced their gestures of kindness were really intended to shame him; the filling of the terra cotta pot he used as a cigarette butt receptacle with a geranium, healthy meals left at his doorstep, landmines of vegetable and rice dishes. The neighborhood was changing, and how. Robert recalled, in a hazy way, the optimistic, clear-eyed couples who bought into this co-op building at the time he and Aggie did. That was back when Aggie was doing costume work for the Goodman Theater and he, ridiculously gel-haired and narrow-tied, had begun to sell a couple of his paintings. The other rosy chaps were a young architect and a newspaper guy, a feature writer for the Tribune, their wives essentially little cherry blossoms on their lapels. Aggie, with her heavily mascara-ed eyes, punky black hair, and vintage clothing, couldn’t relate to the wives’ bland chatter. They, in turn, considered her exotic. Perhaps a bit dangerous, Robert chuckled. The newspaperman, Wynn or some such ridiculously WASP-y name, had gotten Robert some illustration assignments for the Trib company; work intended to supplement the elusive income of a serious painter, but which, more often than not, Robert admitted with some shame, disappeared at one of his favorite downtown watering holes. The clear-eyed couples moved on, needing to claim their rightful places in some horrible, vapid suburb, and the immigrants started moving in. Robert had nothing against them being foreign, indeed not. He found researching their presumptive histories a fascinating and worthy occupation. Especially since it seemed forsaking the devil’s tea left him with more time on his hands. Of course Aggie had taken their computer and laid claim to most of their library, but Robert held to the classically written volume anyhow; impressive, if musty, stacks piled up beside his armchair. Ancient Celtic Heroes had been helpful when the Drumgooles moved into the garden apartment; Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses (Georgioulis notwithstanding) was spot on in revealing timeless failings within human nature. Nothing contemporary (but then Robert was convinced nobody knew how to write anymore). The problem was that these transplants were all so damn loud. Loud when they cooked, when they laughed, when they fought. Loud televisions. Loud lovemaking (just the men, he’d noted). He had painted many of them, in dignified postures, layered over old unsold canvases. But in the breathing world they only interfered with his meditations. They seemed deaf to the transcendent robinsong each morning. They interrupted with their pots and pans and yammering, his experiencing the iridescence of twilight, tearing into the expansiveness of his thoughts during his evening smoke. He went to the refrigerator for some orange juice. Out the kitchen window he could see the woman Radha again, lecturing her son in their native tongue. Hindi? Urdu? In any case, nearing an octave above human tolerance. Her diatribe could be heard from within his third floor apartment. The sound reminded him of the grating, relentless, tiny machine gun fire scoldings of the wrens that darted into the knotholes of his youth in Indiana. The poor kid was seated on a folding chair beneath the string of undershirts. Their whiteness, in reflection, made narrow rivers in his neat black hair. Robert could tell this wasn’t his first rodeo, his face shut down, his thoughts no doubt elsewhere. He must be around ten, Robert guessed, probably wondering what his friends are up to, or fantasizing about how he’d like to remove his mother’s voice box. “People of color!” It was his knee-jerk reaction. Then, reproaching the world as he often did, Christ in an elevator, we’re all people of color! He reckoned with indignation, the term insinuates “white” people lack color. As an artist, he did not lay down Titanium White and call it a day. He used greens and blues and mauves when mixing paint to capture a fair complexion. Black people! Brown people! He smiled derisively. Lazy misnomers. On canvas, he built those subjects layer upon gorgeous layer, using umber and sienna surely, but also plum, ochre, ultramarine blue, warm gray, even a shimmer or two of aqua or ivory. He thought it a pity—and an ignominious product of the world’s rush—that nobody seemed to take time to honor the amazing palette out there. Nature’s spectrum is a goddamned miracle, yet we idiots consistently miss it! Years back, he’d done an impressionistic portrait of their little Pauline in gradations of the dusky purple he noticed beneath her huge eyes, under her chin, and along the side of her nose; a child made of shadows. It had grounded him, drawing or painting his daughter; she was his, no matter what hues he chose to use or omit. The things inside her, the light and the pain she was made of were the things he valued, what he connected to. Those are the things that people should attend to, if only they weren’t in such a goddamn hurry. Radha’s lips were paling. Yet there she was, scolding away, a lecture on behavior it seemed, though Robert couldn’t make out any English words save a phrase sounding something like “street boys.” In contrast, the kid’s face was darkening. Tears boiled over and suddenly, defiantly, he tore off down the stairs, knocking over the chair. His mother leaned over the porch railing, her blue-black hair coming loose, and issued some sort of shrill warning in that up-down, run-on language of theirs. Robert could feel the slap within her words. Until recently he’d heard her address the child in a mellifluous tone, sounding to him much like a lullaby. Lately however, her voice had developed a sharpness. Didn’t she understand that boys need to be a little bad? Radha let the screen door slam. He could still hear her accelerated speech as she entered her apartment, letting off steam. A moment later a man stepped out. Compact and well groomed, he was the color of bitter chocolate, Robert observed, heavy on the violet and burnt umber. Robert hadn’t really seen him before, Radha being the one most often outside. The man leaned out, over the railing, the whites of his eyes flashing as he summoned his boy with clipped authority, “Aarev!” He brandished the flat of his hand. Robert decided he’d heard enough. This sort of thing tightened his jaw, reminded him too much of childhood years best forgotten; the disappointment he’d been to his own father, a cop and night watch supervisor at the university. That is, before his father drank himself to death. Robert didn’t need to go down that road…his nerves were already in a precarious condition. Heredity obviously stacked against him, the raw chaos of others’ lives was certainly not going to be helpful in his sobriety. He conjured what had, to him, become a mantra, Solveig’s words, walk away from bad intention . These two malignant nincompoops were probably just doing their lousy best to raise this kid in this godawful world. Still, Agatha would never have allowed the entire neighborhood to bear witness like this. And she’d certainly held Pauline to some lofty standards, the child growing unnaturally quiet and submissive. Or maybe it had been his erratic behavior that had done that. In his absence or, more likely in the frightening face of his inebriation, she may have believed she existed as her mother’s only consolation. In any case, his little piccolo, an adult now, and faraway, had been absorbed into the ranks of the proper and compliant. And so these nincompoops would lose Aarev. The boy could be a mischievous bundle, no doubt. Watching from his smoking spot on the landing, Robert had delighted in the half-baked pranks he came up with when his mother wasn’t watching, attempts to court the attentions of the neighborhood gang with whom he apparently wasn’t allowed to play. Sometimes Robert snuck a quick hand signal, an encouragement, and the boy’s face brightened. This little guy wanted street cred like the dickens. Though sympathetic, he had to agree with Radha here, that lot were a herd of pre-pubescent little shits with one thirteen-year old bad influence at the helm. There was something dreamy about Aarev. Robert caught it in the way the child hummed to himself, and paused coming up the back stairs after school, his eyes carefully following the sounds of those off at play, trying to figure out where the day’s gathering spot was. It evoked memories, Robert’s lonely boyhood. Centuries ago it seemed, he too had been his mother’s only child, skinny and wistful, ostracized, his artistic leanings willfully misjudged by his own father. He’d eventually earned the respect of his peers by one-upping them in the poor choice department. Easier once his dad had successfully potted himself. Restless, Robert went to his books. Between a forgotten copy of Mother India and a disintegrating paperback translation of the Bhagavad Gita , he was able to decipher the boy’s name. Aarev: Peaceful. Jesus in a cab. He stood up from his armchair and tore off his reading glasses. He paced, lingering over some pictures of his long ago Paulina Piccolo. Conscience, resurrected, was pulling at him. He grabbed his cigarettes and scrounged matches from the front pocket of yesterday’s pants. He made sure he had an extra pencil and clean gum eraser in his flak jacket. To be sure, he’d much rather have been setting off on one of his blind adventures, travel mug of Jameson in hand. Diligence. Four o’clock, he reminded himself. With exasperated resolve he unwrapped a Lemonhead, opened the door and stepped out in search of the boy. The alley, once paved, was all cracks now, fractured and uneven. Pebbles and fragmented glass ground to sparkle filled fissures and scattered its length. Dull green dumpsters loafed, wide-hipped and dented, along the back walls of all the buildings. It had become a dirty, desolate canyon in which, ironically, every aroma was captured, every conversation could be overheard, and echoing bedsprings betrayed the tossed and turning at night. He didn’t want to imagine his neighbors in bed. Aggie, on the other hand, he summoned to mind frequently (and torturously), as he did now for a streak of a moment. Young Agatha Holmes. The lustful little sprite had been intoxicating. God she could excite him back then—tease and then accommodate him, anywhere. During the feverish onset of their relationship they’d clasped each other in a theater dressing room, sopping and ecstatic, costumed, an irrepressible nun and priest. But his absences, lost in the drink, and the soul-sucking responsibilities he’d left her with, had served to cool things between them until, after a point, sex was only a concept they fought over. These days he mostly thought about Solveig; her enormous hazel eyes, the subtle colors of a landscape, set into a face like a sunrise. Aggie’s face had been so different, fox shaped, pale, like the moon at night, her hair chopped and blackened and defying direction. Sol’s was a honey-brown tumble reliably falling out of tails or twists, an invitation. She was deliciously abundant. She was balm, as soulful and beckoning as music. Still, he’d never cross the line. She’d hardly fall for costume-love, or any of his old school seductions. He’d hazarded a flirtation once or twice, fortified by Jack Daniels, but held back. Beneath Solveig’s tough kindness, her unsparing honesty, was a pulsing resilience, an essential belief he couldn’t share or risk damaging. It seemed to him that addiction hadn’t quite toppled her pillars as it had his. That wholesome determination made her unattainable, and precious. He’d come to rely on her dependable rejection of his bullshit. Beyond her sponsorship, Sol was his friend, his Achelois, she who drives away pain . In empty moments though, he couldn’t stop himself from the fantasy, now that he was sober, that she might come to him. He knew this was fairy dust. She was surely fond of him, but as a niece might be fond of a curmudgeonly uncle. At fifty-seven he was certainly old enough to be that. And bourbon hadn’t done his looks any favors. When he bothered to glance in the mirror, he met a ragged man, worn out and gray. A face deeply lined and veiny at the nose. Someone in need of help. He slowed, hearing a cough echo down a shadowy gangway. Bending sideways, Robert cautiously peered into the vaguely urine-scented shaft. Sitting in the gloom, his knees drawn up tightly, was Aarev. His little arms were glistening wet, he’d been wiping his face with them. Even in the dim light Robert could discern the child’s thick eyelashes made blacker by tears. He cleared his throat, sending the boy’s head burrowing into his knees. “My dear fellow,” Robert began. He knew he sounded like someone from another time and place, a better one. His intention. He got no response. “I got pretty good at hiding when I was your age.” At this the boy looked up with one eye. Robert brought out a pencil, casually sliding it behind his ear. He listed for Aarev some of his more inspired hideouts. On days when teasing—and life—had seemed merciless, he admitted hiding inside his locker to avoid recess. “The locker vents were just at my eye level. I saw some pretty entertaining things from there.” He finished with a dance of the eyebrow. Aarev whispered, “Like what?” “Oh well, lots of things.” Robert chuckled, deliberately enticing his audience. Aarev was hooked. Tell me. “One particular day, I saw my teacher—a very strict disciplinarian, I might add—slip off her shoes and dance in her stockings down the hall with Mr.—the principal. They um—,” Robert thought better of going on. Aarev shrugged, unimpressed. “My teacher dances all the time in class. And we do hip hop in Friday gym.” Adjusting to these concepts, he scratched at the stubble on his chin. He searched for something meatier. “Well…I once got on a bus, didn’t know where in hell I was going.” Silence. “Were you scared?” “I was desperate, sir. Anxious to get away—my father was tough. Didn’t care for how I chose to spend my time. Mad as hell I didn’t want to play baseball like the other boys. I wanted to draw.” He tapped the cover of his sketch pad. “I stayed on that bus to the end of the line, then took another.” Aarev’s brows lifted, then gathered. He was digesting this. It occurred to Robert he’d come off as endorsing such a flight. “But that I don’t recommend!” This lurched out in a gruffer voice than he’d intended. Aarev shifted a preoccupied gaze out, toward the alleyway. Great, Robert thought, I’ve given the kid the notion to run away. He didn’t need that on his plate. It was trying enough to handle the damage he and booze had done to his own daughter. He was still figuring out how to make amends for managing to miss almost all her school events, the damn dances and award ceremonies; all the terrible words he’d inflicted upon her and her mother, spurting out uncontrolled, like diarrhea; his final act, wasted and untouchable, plowing into another car. He was haunted by the look of terror on her young face seeing him after the hospital, blackened and sutured and trembling in withdrawal. He couldn’t be responsible for this child. “Don’t you do that, now,” Robert repeated, holding an earnest tone. “You know there are seedy sorts out there. Anyhow, best not to run from your problems.” (He didn’t miss the irony in this). “I know a better way to get yourself lost.” Beckoning, he drew the pencil from behind his ear and flipped open his pad. Robert’s head had always swum with characters on dangerous romantic missions. They trod the pathways of his mind, old time villains and displaced princesses, explorers, travelers on amethyst mountains, in magnificent bone-scattered caves, conquering treacherous seas, encountering (of course) the swarthy eye-patched and wooden-legged, those disenfranchised, misunderstood heroes. They were his fascinations, his companions, frequently finding their way into his artwork. Alcohol had only made it easier to go there. He glanced up from his paper, self-conscious over the small but noticeable tremor in the hand holding the pencil. With his practiced eye, he sketched out a majestically turbaned boy riding on top of an elephant. He set the pair on a city street, a bus lumbering behind them. Aarev rearranged his limbs, rising, his curiosity drawing him nearer to where Robert was scribbling away, into the light, straining for a look. Whisking his 4B pencil back and forth, here and there, Robert added shading, then lowered the pad so the boy could see. “Oh, man!” The child’s voice hadn’t dropped yet. “You can do that?” Slowly, dramatically, Robert produced the other pencil, holding it out. He was entranced, the poor little scab. Robert felt a sudden bristling at the idea of committing to something beyond the moment. A failure at cooperation, it had taken him years to tolerate the dried-up losers club with equanimity. Eventually he’d reasoned that if AA could tolerate him , Robert Galen could force himself to reciprocate. He could see this little cartoon was being taken as some sort of an invitation. He hesitated. “We’ll see, my good man.” Their shoes—his, desert boots he’d lovingly preserved since the 90’s, Aarev’s, checkered slip on sneakers—crunched the loose gravel in sync. They took time going back. Aarev was busy telling Robert that he’d actually never ridden an elephant, nor had his father or uncles; that in school they’d had a big discussion about how those kinds of pictures are “assum-shins” and “stereo-tyfes.” This stopped Robert in his tracks. Discussions at school! Back in Indiana in his own prehistoric youth, he was told to memorize out of whitewashed books; expected to accept everything imparted by whatever old battle axe handed down the grades, stuff designed to turn children into little narrow minded agree-ers. It dawned on him how misled he’d been, how many false trails he’d followed. How absurdly rigid and out of step he’d become. Not so different from the rule-followers and conformists that gave him gas. He’d been wallowing in self-pity for so long, his whole life it seemed suddenly. Comparing himself to manufactured folk heroes! He’d gotten lazy, allowed his powers of observation to dull, his brain to shrink! Taking a deep bow, he offered this young man an apology. With ceremony he drew the sketchbook and pencil from their pockets. He got to work adding an abundance of shaggy fur to the elephant and lavishly arced its tusks, transforming the beast into a mastodon. He erased the turban and gave the image of the rider a three cornered hat with a fantastic plume and an eye patch. He tore the picture out and handed it to Aarev, who giggled at first, then slowly looked up “You can give me lessons?” Visited by memory; mornings when Pauline was very young, mornings he’d been too hungover to go outside and they’d drawn pictures together in shared silence, Robert found himself assenting. “You have to ask your parents.” He said, though hating the necessity, the dismal properness. A light in the boy’s face dimmed. He paused. “Please. Wait?” The request must be as much about having backup as expedience, Robert thought, watching the boy climb the stairs. He checked his watch. It was approaching four o’clock. Remaining at his post as promised, Robert waited, rubbing Solveig’s worry stone. As it warmed in his hand, he heard voices rise from Aarev’s apartment. This time the loudness didn’t annoy him, it concerned him. His own father, Supervisor Frank Galen of the bloodshot eyes and unforgiving hands, had doled out whippings, but had much preferred humiliation, calling him “Mona Lisa” in front of other kids. He realized he was clenching the worry stone, in his fist. Above, big voices overrode small. A dissonant wail followed by a door slamming, hard. Feeling the weapon in his hand, Robert took aim. The tiny missile, launched impulsively, missed the window and dropped tick-click to the pavement. Solveig’s words rose like a flock of birds. Walk away from bad intention. As heinous as this situation was, was he really anyone to judge? After all, he had hurt his own child, badly, irrevocably, if not with his hand, certainly with his own ogre-isms and excuses. The blunt force of the voices upstairs was tearing open old wounds. All the painful places inside that alcohol had scabbed over. Grabbing the fallen piece of jade, he swiftly took the old gray staircase. He thought or could imagine, mournful sounds muffled within the apartment. Boldly, he rapped the stone against the door. The forcefulness created an echo in the alley. Inside, things got quiet. Radha came, but kept the screen door latched between them. Her eyes were wide, expression tight. Robert exhaled and forced a smile. “Hello…Radha…” “Mrs. Bedi. My husband isn’t here.” They both knew she was lying. “I think you may have seen me before,” he went on, certain she too knew his lie, the real reason for his visit. She nodded. Clearing his throat of its usual gravel, he said, “I like to think of myself as an explorer of man.” She stared uncomfortably. “I have been thinking I’d like to learn about your culture. I’ve been reading, but my books are quite a bit out of date. I’m out of date,” he smiled ruefully. Radha looked confused, impatient. He got to it. “I had a conversation with your son about some important things he’s been learning in school…left me wondering if I might continue that discussion—here, on your porch, of course.” He motioned to the decrepit folding chair. A strategic touch, he thought, especially in light of his having materialized, a stranger uninvited, outside their door. “I’m sorry, this is not a good—” “Your boy Aarev…an excellent young man…could share with me what he is learning in school, and in exchange perhaps I could give him some…art lessons? I was an artist, you see. I’m, well, I’m retired now.” Through the crumby screen he saw Mr. Bedi appear, lurking dusty purple behind her. In a blur of emotion the man was indistinguishable from his own father and he resisted an urge to call the asshole out. Instead, Robert girded himself, and turned up his volume, making certain he could be clearly heard inside. “Your child is bright. He seems to take school seriously. I’m afraid my schooling left much to be desired.” Bedi shouldered his way forward then, holding up the drawing. Beneath his bristling, Robert could recognize some of his own existential burdens mirrored in the man’s deeply creased forehead. “You gave this to my son? He doesn’t know you. What do you want from him?” There was some explaining to be done, Robert owed Bedi that much. He hated that the world had become so ready to excavate a nugget of ugliness from an offering of fellowship. Then again, why in Lucifer’s name shouldn’t people be paranoid? Look at how pervasive rank behavior had become, and how boldly committed. With a friendly air (that required a little effort), he recounted how he happened to run across the child seeming in low spirits. The drawing, Robert explained, had been an effort to cheer him up, coax him home. He wasn’t sure Bedi was buying it. It was clear he’d never be able to share his portraits of Radha with the man. “And why do you care?” Bedi glowered, puffing up his chest. He decided to ignore the man’s bluster and addressed himself to her. “I’m not much, but I once was a—” He couldn’t cop to it: a painter. “I made my living doing illustration.” The boy was nowhere to be seen. Shut in his room, Robert assumed, silently fuming at the idea. The man began to examine Robert as one might an anonymous letter. “This is not a usual thing…” Radha spoke to her husband in that mellow tone Robert had heard her use in the past. With a gesture of her hand she excused them both for a moment, backing her husband into their apartment and closing the door. Robert was left hanging with the undershirts. Shaking and a bit damp under the collar, he craved a smoke like a bear craves salmon, but resisted diving for the pack. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked up into the clouds. He imagined Sol’s hair, true gold under the gym lights. Half the time that was what got him through the damn meetings, the golden mayhem of her hair. And her laugh, a deep cough and twinkle of the eye. How she owned her alcoholism as if it was a bad knee, as if it was something she’d brought upon herself, trying too many impossible leaps. It was four o’clock when they returned. Aarev was with them. He seemed smaller, subdued, didn’t say a word. His deep creature-brown eyes riveted to Robert’s while his mother grasped his shoulders with nervous, gold ringed fingers. Her hair was smoothed again and her smile was trained. The man of the house did the talking. He came out onto the porch. Robert extended a hand, but Bedi, obviously still suspicious, anchored his on his hips. “I will agree to this. Aarev would like to learn how to draw. This is better for him than running in the streets.” His expression was stern, wary. Radha spoke softly then. “He’s a good boy.” She ran a hand over Aarev’s hair and the boy, embarrassed, tilted his head away, touching his palm against the frayed screen. At the sound of his wife’s voice the furrow in Bedi’s brow eased. He gave a nod. “My wife and I will share with you about our culture, if you are interested.” *** Robert had been stewing. It was bothering him to be collaborating in any way with a parent who seemed amenable to raising a hand against a child. As a survivor of it himself, bullying topped any disdain he might have for obligation. Something new was willing him forward though, something he was uncovering or recovering. He wasn’t clear on it all yet, just that he’d allow himself no escape hatches. Lessons were to begin Saturday and would include dinner with the family. Robert had feigned delight when agreeing to the terms. It seemed requisite to live a life with other people in it, one has to abide by conditions and learn from them, to blend. On Saturday he collected an assortment of his old colored pencils, in various states of diminishment, but usable, and purchased a large pad of newsprint and a gum eraser wrapped in glistening plastic. He gathered together a small portfolio of his own work…for legitimacy’s sake. Wisely omitted were the pastels of Princess Devi, vision beneath the laundry lines. Solveig had convinced him to share this development in his life with the dried-up losers. Wanting to please her, he’d stood before them at last night’s meeting (having finally made it there), fighting past his fear, then furious at their applause, the silly sea of nodding heads. For Chrissake , he hadn’t even done anything yet, let alone succeeded at it. “Yes you have, Robby,” Solveig smiled. “You have.” Traversing a landscape, not of magical vistas and soon to be rescued princesses, but one pitted with injury and regret, inhabited by the unalike as well as the painfully relatable, he’d need to carry her belief in a pocket inside himself—next to those that embrace his faraway Pauline, and this boy, Aarev. Another patch to sew upon his deep blue heart. He’d taken himself to the library. Aware that Mother India was most certainly not an accurate, full account of a people, just one long-outdated perspective, he needed an infusion. He had to come at this thing with an open admission of his complacency, with humility, Christ knows , and with respect; a starting place. He made certain then, on Saturday, that he’d showered and shaved, his jacket pockets emptied of cigarettes and equipped with hard candy. Antacid would be practical (for god knows they spice up their food). Battling an epic battle against old demons, he toiled through the damn Serenity Prayer. He didn’t want to screw this up. Now, in the narrow hallway leading from the stillness of his bedroom, he stared into his hand, ruminating on the green clouds captured within the dint of the smooth jade worry stone. He slipped that into its place as well. He would give it to Aarev. The boy could use it, the strange, warm, secret strength it carried. In "Exhaling Carefully," an antisocial middle-aged has-been artist and recovering alcoholic has an epiphany while trying to help the young son of immigrant neighbors with a personal problem, and finds that he is the one who benefits most from their arrangement. Previous CHRISTINA ROBERTSON is a half-Greek agnostic tree lover, a former therapist and ex-floral designer, a writer, and a bit of a divining rod for the absurdity beneath so many of life’s darker moments. Living just outside Chicago, her professional background in psychiatric settings ignited a fascination for nature's terrible and fragile beauty as it exists within people, which informs her writing. As a member of the long-running Off Campus Writers Workshop and Fred Shafer’s short story workshop, Christina's Pushcart-nominated short fiction has appeared in Pleiades , Bellevue Literary Review , and Tahoma Literary Review , among others. Next

The Black Flies of Home by Brock Dethier Black flies dance in the air between my head and my brother’s, distorting the view. We sit on pinkish granite smoothed and sloped by retreating glaciers ten millennia ago. Below us, the Rocky Branch of the Saco River, then the ridge that leads from Stanton and Pickering all the way up to Davis, Isolation, and Washington itself. Farther west, the ski trail scars of Mt. Attitash, still the new ski area, though it opened in 1965. Black flies are small, hard to see, quiet. They like warm sheltered places-- behind your ear or knee. They follow the blood others have left. And bite. I react with large hard itchy welts that I scratch bloody in my sleep. Mosquitoes are everywhere but I’ve never seen black flies outside New England, so their presence is a special “welcome home!” to the region. Around us, blueberry bushes with subtle flowers-- little cream bells that will become the fruit of the New Hampshire gods-- rhodora about to brighten the ledges with cerise blossoms, grus eroded from the ledges filling the cracks between them, sweet fern. I wasn’t aware of being bitten but I find blood behind my ear. Within our view, we’ve skied both downhill and cross country, canoed, floated, kayaked, swam, hiked of course. We were born just out of sight to the left. We’ve come in search of iron mines and leave with sparkly ore, black fly bumps starting to itch, and a few crystals to take back west to what still seems after 26 years a temporary home. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Issue 1 Few who have experienced New England’s black flies would argue that they make the world a better place, yet for people who have grown up with them, the flies mean home. Having spent half my life in New England and half in Utah, I’m interested in how we think about “home,” and this unpublished, personal poem tries to illuminate the complexities of the concept and to highlight the irony that sometimes what bugs you may come to signify home for you. .................................................................................................................................................................................... BROCK DETHIER retired from Utah State University after directing the writing composition program for 11 years. His publications include From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music (Heinemann, 2003), First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers (Utah State University Press, 2005), Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them (Utah State University Press, 2013), and two books of poetry, Ancestor Worship (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015). Next - Fireflies by Kevin Prufer Next