Author: londonR

My clothes are at the dry cleaners. I’m not sure why, but my entire wardrobe is at the dry cleaners. I’m excavating my now empty closet, and I’m going to be late to work in fifteen minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a dry cleaner. A twenty-something intern isn’t exactly constitutive of someone who can afford something like that. A small folded stack of clothes sits at the back of my closet, on the middle cubby of a three-leveled shelf I didn’t realize existed until just now.

My late father’s well-worn black band sweatshirt from that one 70’s rock band he’d always sing along to on the radio. I hadn’t so much as looked at it since it arrived at my doorstep in a plastic bag. A pair of white shorts sits below. I reach out for them, and I hesitate for a moment when my fingertips brush the man-made softness of his sweatshirt, somehow releasing the last of his cologne locked into the fabric. I turn away from the clothes, catching a glimpse of my body in the mirror, where the clothes seem to have made their way onto me. The stretched out head hole of the crewneck falling off one of my shoulders, the sleeves going past my hands the same way that’d make him laugh when I stole it from him. I’m rubbing my thumb over the hole in the cuff of the sleeve. The same one I wore in at the hospital at his bedside. The ridged stitching is rough against my skin, just as rough as the memories feel as they seem to be spinning around me, a double helix faded at the flickering ceiling light of my closet.

They spin and spin, along with the room, until the universe decides to give me a break. Everything freezes around me, still shots of a bond suspended mid-air like the photographs of an undeveloped life. I see the now present gap in place of the closet doorway and I’m moving toward it, only to find myself in the kitchen. The shoe rack by the front door is empty and the clock on my microwave says three hours have passed somehow, and the minutes seem to go up by the millisecond. I stride across the room, too late to care about shoes anymore. The keys hanging on the wall are in my hand, and I’m through the door of my apartment. The rough, brown bristles of my double sided welcome mat digging into the bare soles of my feet, reading the word goodbye at me as I fumble with the keys that don’t seem to fit into my door lock anymore.

I don’t seem to care that much, now that I find myself halfway down my street, watching as the bright sunlight moves through the canopy of the trees lining the sidewalk. The warm breeze of the summer meets my back, perfectly complemented by the heat of the pale gray concrete underneath my feet. The street is empty, a strange lull in the usual company of the neighborhood in early June. Lemonade stands seem to be packed up, garden hoses wrapped and put away, bikes parked on their respective driveways. The only sign of life seems to be me, the trees, and a dark moving shape at the end of the street, fast approaching, seemingly speeding up. A strong breeze now pushing against my back, propelling me forwards. The dark shape has revealed itself to be a black dog, absorbing the fragmented sunlight as it approaches, staring me dead in the eyes.

Something around me feels different, but I can’t peel my eyes off the dog wandering down the street. The wind seems to swirl around me, the warm, nostalgic feeling from before now replaced with a sharp coldness, my father’s scent rushing past my nose once again as my heart thuds in my chest. The black dog strides past me on the street, head turned as if it is watching me, and a resounding chill passes over me with the newfound cloud cover above my head. Every hair on my body is standing up as I turn my own head now, catching a glimpse of the white car now hurling itself down the road as I finally set my eyes back onto the dog.

I find myself following him back down the street, until he pauses. Two paws over the ledge of the sidewalk, the dog stares at me as it crosses over into the street. My feet move without my brain, the black eyes of the dog keeping me in some sort of trance. In one breath, one foot hits the tar of the road. Then two. I’m following behind him, some sort of invisible tether connecting us, walking together until he stops. He’s sitting in the middle of the road, the two of us a still outline in the car’s fast approaching headlights. I’m using every ounce of strength to push him out of the way. He won’t move on. No amount of pushing or yelling gets him to. He doesn’t even leave at the prolonged warning of the horn. Nor does he leave when the bright light blinds us.

Pain. Exhaustion. My head is killing me, and there’s a ringing replaying in my head, a manifestation of the loud horn fluttering my eyes open. My face cringes and I shift slightly at the light hitting my eyes, sending a sharp but quick wave of pain through my body. Back pressed against the glass of a window, my legs are curled up in front of me, the skin exposed from my shorts brushing against the woven gray fabric of the two seats I’m laying across. There is a soft blanket outstretched over my legs, one that looks suspiciously identical to the baby blanket my mother had to pry out of my hands when she deemed I was too old for it, and the one I slept with every night after my dad passed. I stretch my legs outward across the chairs, like a cat lounging in front of their favorite window. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight coming in through the glass behind me, the golden warm tones of the sunset outside seemingly following me as we fly by it. I pull my knees towards my chest, resting my feet flat on the seat and I sit and listen to the rivets of the tracks as we pass over them for a moment, my head pressed back against the glass.

I let my fingertips trace the soft pink and blue hearts on the velvety fabric of the blanket, and eventually I find them running down the satiny trim around the sides to find the tag. I flip the blanket up to read the handwritten inscription I know better than the back of my hand, only for the usual three-word note to be replaced with a new one. It was still in my father’s handwriting, leaving only but one word this time. “Soon”. Soon? What the hell does that mean? I look around, frantically, as if I might somehow look up to see the wrinkles on his forehead I used to make fun of again before I toss the blanket off me, doing my best to stand up against the gentle movements of the train and shaky legs. I take a few steps forward, clinging to the tops of the row of chairs as I turn back and neatly begin folding the blanket on the chair, re-reading a word I hadn’t seen in that handwriting in so long. Forcing myself to stop ruminating, I turn in the empty train car, facing the windows on the opposing wall, and move closer to them.

Peering out, I see the vastness of the ocean, stretching from underneath and beyond the tracks of the train, as far as the eye can see. The waters are still, with calm, gentle waves that appear an almost dull gray shade, the only color coming from the rays of the sunset reflecting off the surface. A focal point, the waves meet the sky out towards the horizon, who knows how far away and blend together, a comforting union straight out of an oil painting.

I can feel the hard floor as I walk through the train car, eager to see what might be on the door at the end of the car. Muted cream with delicately ornate details in gold, I extend my hand outwards to the door, grasping the gilded knob and twisting what little I could before being met with the feeling of the locked door. I knocked and I called out, standing under the vent outpouring warm air and the nostalgic scent of vanilla, but was only met with the gentle hum of speed and machinery. Frustrated, I turn my back to the door, and begin to pace down the aisle of the train, before something stops me dead in my tracks.

Laughter. A wonderous, child-like laugh fills the car. I’m frozen, standing in the middle of the train, in front of the boarding doors, and laughter rings out in the once silent train car. I pick my head up, looking towards the speakers for some kind of answer, when what once was the sky and the ocean turn into a solid black. A soft glow emits from inside the train car itself, before the laughter sounds again, illuminating the sky outside with its cadence.

Looking out the large windows of the boarding doors, I watch as the environment transforms around me outside the train. Black turns to the dark navy blue walls and walnut floors of the kitchen in my childhood home. Sunrays come in through the bay window of the dining nook, where I see myself sitting, laughter alternating between my sister and I. The train is driving across the floor, fully encapsulated in the memory, past my dad as he walks pink and blue plastic bowls of spaghetti to the table. My sister is clapping her hands, excitedly bouncing up and down on the striped bench cushion beside me. I watch as my father sets the bowls down in front of us, the smile on his face pushing his wrinkles together as he dances around the kitchen to the same band on my sweatshirt now, giving us dinner and a show.

I’m frozen, half-way between both walls of the train, watching as we fly by and everything changes one again, to the green cover of the trees in our backyard, my voice echoing “higher” over and over, along with the creaks of metal as my father pushed me on the wooden swing set, and shrieks as I see him hide around the corner of our house, turning on the sprinklers as my sister and I stood over them in the heat of the summer. I watch as the sky darkens, and tiny bursts of golden-orange light float through the sky. A smoke column, from the red grill that sat on our patio arose, the potent smell of slightly-too charred hamburgers wafting through the air. Lemonade pitchers and bug nets adorn our slatted patio table, the four of us sitting around it in the dusk. They take off, and I’m not far behind them, in my father’s big sweatshirt and those always yellow jelly shoes, jumping through the grass, imprisoning any misfortune Junebug in my path, excitedly showing them off to my parents and sister behind me.

I feel the soft pitters of tears falling to my chest, darkening the fabric of the sweatshirt as I sit on the ground, feeling the woodgrain of the floor against my knees and feet. The train chugs along, now in the pale yellow, butterfly-adorned walls of my childhood bedroom. I’m tucked under my princess bedspread, my father’s face aglow in the light of my night light at the foot of my bed. I’m lying, wide-eyed as he’s telling me stories about the travels of his youth; retelling my favorite one, his trip to the Alps with his college roommates. I loved it so much, he’d framed a few of his film photos from his trip and gave them to me to put in my room. “Snowy white mountains,” he’d tell me, seemingly lost in the memory every time. “The most beautiful view of everything below, and you can go sledding, or you can make snow angels or we could have a snowball fight” he’d continue, leaning in as he talked and I giggled, imagining the snowy white mountain tops and the wet splotches on our coats from snowball impact. I listened to my younger self beg him to take her there, and him tell me he would, only if I fell asleep. I watched as I excitedly closed my eyes as he shut off the lights, too excited to fall asleep but imaginative enough to envision our future trip until I fell asleep.

My upper body swayed with the gentle movements of the train, my eyes unable to look away from the life replaying in front of me as my bedroom lit up once again, now a light teal blue and covered in posters of the mountains. I was sitting at my desk now, the built-in one my father had assembled in both my sister and I’s rooms once we started school. It was white once, but now the blue and red crayon scribbles of my youth laid underneath my middle-school pre-algebra homework. My father still sat at the foot of my bed, on my soccer-printed duvet, as he helped me figure out orders of operations and the social hierarchy of public school popularity. A blink of light flashes and we’re out on the front lawn, soccer goals set up on either side of us. We’re running back and forth, trying to fake each other out with a dribble. I sigh as he gets a goal and he cheers for mine, even if he let me make them.

I watch myself turn away from the goal, now dressed in the white and blue uniform of my high school’s soccer team, staring back at my father and family in the stands as my old teammates huddle behind me, flashy hardware in the middle. My dad’s there, holding a sign I deemed embarrassing at the time but now brings tears to my already damp eyes. I look on as the blue of my uniform became the blue of my prom dress, swishing at my feet as my father told me he reserved the right to my first dance. He pressed a pre-recorded track on our tiny digital keyboard, dancing me around the hardwood floors of our house on his toes like he did so long ago. The prom photos that haunted my mother’s Facebook flashed by in quick blinks, in sync with the flash of the camera in my mothers hand, capturing the moments in real time.

Hundreds of moments pass by as the train moves along. My father singing along to his favorite band in his red truck. Swimming in the neighborhood pool in the summer. My first car. The flowers my dad gave me after every event. The spot they take up in my freezer. My high school graduation. Packing my room up the summer of my senior year. The five-hour drive my family made with me to my college dorm, and the way my father and his college friend carried my mattress and ninety-percent of my boxes up those stairs. My father’s film photos on the wall. My parents sending me coffee money before every final. The shitty bar that confiscated all my friends and I’s fake IDs. Several times. Every call I made to my parents, and how my father promised a trip to the Alps once I graduated.

Things go dark for a longer moment this time, as the memory fades away and leaves me with the dim light of the train car, and the repetitive sounds of the train and my sniffly nose. Then I hear it. The ring in my ears that has haunted me for the past two years. The ringing of my old cell phone. The light from the screen fills the temporary void, as I watched it all over again. Two-fifty two in the morning, the screen read. Incoming call from mom, the pixels said. My stomach sank, and I laid back on the hard train floors, trying to do anything not to relive this moment. My ears began ringing again, a subconscious shield protecting against everything but my late-night scream of disbelief, the thud of my old phone hitting the carpeted floor, the muffled words of my ex-boyfriend through my heavy sobs. Even now, I could feel the same twist in my gut, the same burning in my lungs. My chest heaved in unison, the same way it did back then.

No more light appeared. The memories continued flooding around me, battering against the exterior of the train, just as dark a representation as my state of mind. The memories appeared as just as I hoped to forget them, in their excruciatingly detailed entirety, with an exception. A large black dog now remained at my side, play by play. He sat as I rubbed my thumb into the sleeve of my father’s sweatshirt, at his bedside, begging him to make it to the Alps with me. He sat as I stood on soggy ground, six feet above the person I loved most in the world. He walked on the stage with me at my college graduation, in front of me, as if he was dragging me along, straight to my mother’s somber eyes on the field afterwards, her own dog joining mine.

I eyed him, as my life continued to replay, watching as we followed each other, a twisted dance of sorts. I moved my own mattress. He laid on my chest. I took him on walks. He led me to treats. I put my father’s things in a box. He fetched them without reason. I watched, and I watched our dance, my toes being stepped on now, until there were no longer both of us. Just the black dog.

Everything else was white. I shook with the train and my own emotion, as I watched the dog run alongside the train, like a shadow in a headlight until I watched as the widows behind me flew past him, escaping my only companion. The speaker sounded yet again, but this time it was the voice of a man I’d never heard before. “Destination coming up soon. Please grab your personal items.” I pushed myself to a shaky stand. I traversed down the aisle, as I watched the scenery shift out the window. The solid white quickly escaped my view from the windows as I walked, being replaced with bright highlights and soft shadows of freshly fallen snow on the rocky ledge of the tracks. Standing in front of where I’d woken up I breathlessly looked out the window at the unraveling setting.

Snowy white mountain tops.

The most beautiful view of small slopes, the golden-pink sunset, trees, and ski towns, beginning to light up in the distance by their house lights.

The train began to slow as it approached a small building, crested with untouched snow and enveloped in dark, chocolatey brown wooden siding and a rocky foundation. I grabbed my blanket from below me, now sitting with a pair of red gloves and a dog-eared train ticket that hadn’t been there before. I quickly walked back up the aisle, to the double doors I’d spent the majority of the ride at. I ran my thumb over the puffed out words of the ticket. The Alps. The train finally lulled to a stop in front of the building, and with a soft ding the doors slid open. I bolted out, feet slamming against cold concrete, running through matching wood and rock archways, to the snowy parking lot lined with trees sat in front of me.

Where a car was waiting for me.

A red truck, blaring music I could recite the words to in my sleep, and a driver singing along with now-gray hair and forehead wrinkles.

(Author’s Note: All tense changes are intentional. Enjoy!)

“And how long ago did she pass?” asked Dr. Miller.
“Four years, two months, and seventeen days,” I answered immediately.
As the doctor began to scribble down the information into her notes, I took the opportunity to admire the office. Well, admire is a strong word—I would say study is more like it. The place was terribly eccentric, but I suppose you get what you pay for. It reminded me of a fortune teller’s tent at the fair more than anything, and I was not even sure the diploma hanging on the wall was real; it had the Brooklyn College seal but something about it was off.
She finished writing and caught my attention again. “That’s quite detailed,” she said.
“Hard to forget,” I replied. “She left the apartment at six fourteen a.m. I received the call at eight fifty-six a.m. When I arrived at the hospital, it was half past nine exactly. By the time I got there, she only survived for eight more minutes. The wound was horrible.”
Just the inkling of the memory made my throat ache. My knees felt weak even though I was sitting. I looked down at my hands, my feet, the outfit I chose to wear today. I felt my hair brush against the sides of my face, hyper aware of any proof of the existence of my body. I become anxious at the thought that I am still here, as if it should not be allowed to be true.
“I’d like to talk about something else,” I said.
“Alright,” the doctor obliged.
After some time, I felt less nervous—somehow the subject of my abusive father was much less daunting to me. When the session had finished, the doctor kept me from leaving only a moment more and again scribbled something down, this time on a small piece of paper she had torn from a different notepad. She placed it into my hand.
“I’m going to put you on medication to help you with your nerves for the time being,” she said. “Your insurance will cover most of it, and it’s not too expensive, anyhow.”
I thanked her and left.
The day after, in the evening, I made a trip to the pharmacy to pick up my first dose. I presented the little paper to the man behind the counter and he returned with a sizable brown bottle of some liquid, a receipt, and a pen.
“It’s not a pill?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “Many places don’t even carry it—almost every patient that has to take it switches to something else because of the side effects, so it doesn’t sell.”
“What kind of side effects?”
“Hallucinations are the most common one that people report,” he replied.
“Some others have gotten addicted to it. No deaths yet, though.”
I heaved a sigh. “Well, I’m sure my body has endured worse,” I said, and signed the bottom of the receipt.
When I arrived back home, it was nearly eleven o’clock. I removed the bottle from its paper bag and studied the label on the back. On the cup attached to the bottle’s lid were the characters “40-mL” etched into the plastic.
“I haven’t taken liquid medicine since I was a kid,” I said aloud, but shrugged it off and swallowed. After it was in my system, I retired to my bedroom, and fell asleep with ease for the first time in four years, two months, and seventeen days.
I awoke some hours later with a bursting bladder, but when I returned from the bathroom, I nearly emptied it again.
A red-haired woman with pale skin, wearing only a bra and shorts, was snoring peacefully on the other side of the bed, her back toward me. I recognized her immediately.
“Talia?”
I stepped forward and sat back down on the mattress, switching on my lamp.
“I’m dreaming,” I thought. “It’s just a dream. I must be dreaming.”
But I placed my hand on her arm, and I felt her.
She stirred under my touch and turned to face me with squinted eyes. “Ana?”
“Talia?” I repeated. “How—?”
She turned to glance at the clock. “It’s four in the morning.”
“I—” I stared at her in awe. I could not put the pieces together quickly enough. “I’m dreaming,” I said aloud.
Wait a minute, my deceased wife was back from the dead and all I could think to do was talk to myself?
“Talia—you’re—you’re alive.”
“What do you mean ‘you’re alive?’ Of course I’m alive,” she chuckled. She sat up on her elbows.
I rubbed my eyes violently. I reached out for her again and she grabbed my hand, pulling me toward her, onto my side.
“What’s the matter with you? Did you have a nightmare or something?”
“I’d argue I’m having one right now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she laughed. It reminded me of how badly I missed it, how I missed her smile.
“Talia, I don’t understand. You’ve been dead for four years.”
“I swear to god, if you got high without me—”
“No, I’m serious. I lost you. It was the worst fucking day of my life.”
She bent her brow in concern. “Honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m right here.”
I took a deep breath, looking at her closely, as if this were some elaborate trick, but then I remembered the medicine—and its alleged “side effects.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is all so confusing.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
I swallowed. “Don’t go,” I told her.
She smiled. “I can do that.”
I was unsure whether I should believe her or not.
“Come here,” she said, taking my hand and tugging gently.
I laid my head down on her stomach, feeling the warmth of her skin against my face. I was starting to wonder if this really was the hallucination I thought it was, but I quickly decided I didn’t care—if this were some extremely vivid dream caused by that medicine and I was doomed to awaken the next morning to an empty bed, I would confront it then.
“You said I’ve been dead for four years,” she continued. “And I’ve known you long enough to be able to tell that you were serious. What did you mean?”
I swallowed. I almost felt a pang of anger at her for how she made me relive the day. “I meant exactly what I said. You’ve been dead for four years.”
“What happened to me?”
I breathed deeply. “Car wreck—a really violent one. But you survived, until they brought you to the emergency room. And you didn’t make it. Lost too much blood.” Tears soaked my cheeks. I did not try to stop them.
“But now I’m back,” she replied.
I nodded. “But now you’re back.” My voice was soaked. I reached up to touch her face to make sure I could still feel her.
I would have done anything and everything to live this moment. Now that I had found out all I had to do was drink some weird medicine, I felt that, because I did not go to the ends of the earth, through heaven and through hell to see her again, I didn’t deserve it.
“What should I do if I wake up tomorrow and you’re gone?” I asked.
Absent-mindedly, she ran her fingers through my hair. “Don’t let it eat you alive.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Too late.”

I had forgotten to set my alarm clock the night before. Can’t say I blame myself.
Even still, music drowned my ears, but not any kind I would use to wake myself up in the morning. It was trashy, pumping. It slowly became clearer, louder. I felt leather sleeves against my skin, the button of a pair of jeans digging into my stomach. I lifted my head from a table, my cheek sticking to the resin coating, my vision hazy.
A glass slammed onto the table and I was thrown into full consciousness. I took in my surroundings—a bar. No, not just any bar—a lesbian bar. Before I could wonder what on earth I was doing here, I heard Talia’s voice.
“How the hell did you fall asleep?” she teased. She was sitting on the table. “It’s, like, so goddamn loud in here.”
I blinked at her. “What day is it?” I asked automatically.
“Sunday,” she answered, giving me a confused look. “We’ve only been here an hour. Do I need to take you home already?”
“No, no, I’m alright,” I told her, but I guess I didn’t look like it, because her eyes showed concern. “But I don’t remember us going out. And on a Sunday? Don’t we have work in the morning?”
She rolled her eyes off to the side for a second, thinking. Then she shrugged and nudged the glass toward me. “We’ll be fine. Come on—drink up, let’s dance.”
I picked up the glass and she grabbed my arm immediately, pulling me onto my feet. I threw back the shot and said, “Well, I certainly didn’t marry you because you’re a good influence.”
“Very funny,” she returned, and dragged me toward the speakers.
The place was packed. On a Sunday?
Pink and green glow from the neon signs above the bar danced with us. A street light reflected the colors from a pride flag hanging in the window onto the floor under our feet. Talia stared down at them, trying to see if she could fit her entire sneaker within each of the very thin strips of color. Small amounts of liquid splashed out of the top of the bottle in her hand as she tried to dodge other dancers’ shadows that ducked in and out of the rainbow lines.
She began to mutter something about almost getting it, but she tripped over her own heel and stumbled forward. I caught her and her beer stained my undershirt. She craned her neck up to meet my gaze, grinning with all her teeth.
“You’re drunk,” I laughed.
“Thanks, you too,” she said.
I smiled at her antics, but then my expression quickly fell. “How are you drunk? You’ve barely had one beer.”
She scoffed as if I had just deeply offended her. “I’ve definitely had more than one beer.”
I stared at her. “I watched you. You’ve had one.”
“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.” She grabbed my arm again. “Come here.”
She brought me over to a slightly larger table and shoved her bottle into my hand. Before I could stop her, she hoisted herself up onto the table and began to dance, mostly with her arms. Her movements were slow and whimsical and she was tragically off-beat, but I loved her anyway.
I softened, but then she reached down to tug my hand up toward her and I started. One of my boots made dramatic contact with the surface of the table and I was standing next to her before I could process the event. It had happened so quickly it felt like I had cut through time.
A few of the other patrons whistled and cheered at us. Heat crept up my neck and I wanted off at once, but then she stepped too close to the edge of the table and it buckled under our weight.
The heavy wood and Talia’s body landed with the same thud. I fell in that direction too, my elbow striking her rib cage, and she let out a groan. The bottle flew from my hand when I hit the ground and shattered loudly. Had she not been there to break my fall, the concrete floor might have knocked the wind out of me. I was surprised it hadn’t knocked the wind out of her.
She was laughing hysterically. I smiled along with her, purely by instinct, but my face was boiling red. I pushed myself up onto my elbows.
My hair was a mess. She reached up and tucked the unruly pieces behind my ear. I tried to grab her wrist, but instead she yanked me forward, down onto her kiss.
Everything melted. The heat disappeared from my face. I could breathe. Good god, I miss you.

I opened my eyes to our bedroom. I didn’t feel hungover in the slightest.
The space next to me was empty. Several panicked breaths climbed up my throat, but only one escaped before I swallowed the rest of them. My brow was drenched in sweat.
I shot a glance at the clock on the nightstand. “6:14 A.M.,” it read. A moment later, I heard the front door shut and the lock click. My heart dropped and shattered against my pelvis.
I scrambled out from under the sheets and made a beeline for the door. I hoped I wouldn’t get in trouble for running outside in my underwear.
My fingers made contact with the door knob and reality cut like a film scene. I was dressed and the fluorescent lights above blinded me. I was clutching the knob to a cherry-wood door. The number “523” in black letters stared me down.
I swallowed and reluctantly entered the room to the sound of soft beeping. The strong smell of industrial cleaner hit me fast and hard. Talia laid there in a hospital bed, a spider web of tubes hooked up to her. Her forehead and right eye were wrapped in bandages. Her nose leaked blood.
The beeping began to speed up. A nurse touched my shoulder and I nearly punched her in the face. Before she could speak, the monitor flat-lined.

I woke up screaming. Talia startled awake beside me and placed her hands on my shoulders. I sank into her embrace, not bothering to wonder if she was really there or not. All that mattered was that it felt like she was.
After several minutes, she finally got me to calm down. I pressed my forehead against hers. I ran my thumb across her cheekbone. Tears streamed down my face.
“Goddammit,” I sobbed. “What is happening?”
She twisted the fabric of my pajama shirt between her fingers. “It’s just a nightmare.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s real, I can feel you. I have my senses. It’s not…it’s—”
My gaze drifted past her and I saw the bottle of medicine on the nightstand behind her. My brow furrowed and I got up. I grabbed the bottle and threw it into the garbage bag in the kitchen. I listened to the glass shatter, the liquid stain the bottom of the bag, and watched it leak through the plastic onto the floor.
I returned to the bedroom to find that Talia was gone. The clock told me it was nine o’clock at night.
I heard keys jingle from the other side of the front door and automatically wandered toward the sound. A minute later, the door opened and she walked through it.
“Hi, honey. Sorry I’m so late—some guy came in at the last minute and ordered like ten drinks, and then I had to close,” she said. She kissed my cheek.
Something about her was different.
All other times I had seen her, she seemed murky and faded, her details fuzzy and incorrect. But now, I can see her as clearly as the daylight outside. When I reach forward to take her hand, I recognize textures of her touch that had not been there before. I can make out the waves in her hair. I can count every freckle across the bridge of her nose.
She’s solid. She smells like coffee. Her eyes are vibrant green instead of milky gray. She looks exactly the way she had on the very first day I met her.
“You are real,” I tell her.
She raises an eyebrow at me. “I would hope so,” she jokes.
I play with her fingers. The sun rises in the next thirty seconds. The light coming through the blinds bombards us. She turns to stare at it, her skin glowing with the paleness of the sudden morning.
“It’s Saturday,” she tells me. “And it’s so pretty out. You want to go find a trail or something?
I nod, and she brings me to the door. When she opens it, something about the outdoors behind her seems brighter than it did before, like the sun has more light to give all of a sudden.
Without thinking, I follow her outside. I hear the door shut behind me, and under the white sky, all I see is Talia.

We never thought anyone would step foot on 56 Gerne Lane again. It’d been almost a lifetime since the widower James Roder was found in his toolshed strung up like a Peking duck. They said his face was grotesque and he had no family to confirm his identity; so they used a wedding ring engraved with the initials “J.R.” and a letter they found many years later signed “Yours, James” before officially announcing his death in the local paper. The adults took it very seriously and my Uncle Phillip even thought it was a conspiracy. He was a water well driller and had been to the house in the forties to dig. He used to say “that place ain’t right, even my drill refused to go under that house.”
The kids of our town didn’t take Mr. Roder’s suicide so seriously. There was even one boy whose face was badly burned in a firework mishap and they would taunt him by calling him “old man James” on the school bus. One time, years after Mr. Roder’s death, my friends and I went into the house late at night with flashlights and pocket knives, just in case, but we saw nothing of note; just some old family photos and rat shit. This was the last time we saw anyone near James’ house.
Once the examiner looked at his watch and said “9:09 a.m.” the day they found James, the town never touched the house. They didn’t even mow the lawn. For some time, you could look in the kitchen window from the street and still see plates on a drying rack and a table with a white mug on it; you could look in the living room window and see an out-of-style couch and a shabby chair in the corner with suede missing on the arms from the friction of daily use. Eventually, the grass grew tall enough that you couldn’t see inside anymore and I would imagine that Mr. Roder and his wife still lived in there, obscured by the green.
It was mid-July 1971 when we heard the mower start at the Roder house, the sound of the motor competing with the calls of the cicadas. A man, and his son, from out of town had inherited the house through some complicated process of next-of-kinship that none of us understood and decided to renovate the property to sell it. There were times where it seemed like the father was arguing with himself. We’d hear silence from the boy and then the father would yell out “Quiet! Some arsenic and some traps will do the trick” or “Quiet! We just gotta fix the holes in the walls and rip up what’s left of this carpet” or “Quiet! We’re not tearing it down!” So, we just started referring to his son as “the boy named Quiet.”
It was obvious to us that the son and the father disagreed on what to do with the home. The father would go on and on about how much money they’d make and how it would “just take a few more months” and Quiet would seemingly suggest alternatives that infuriated his father without fail. They’d been working on 56 Gerne Lane for over 6 months now and had only managed to clean up the yard and fix the garage, and we’d always hear the father scream when he found “another fucking rat!” and the sound of a hammer banging aimlessly in an attempt to rid the home of the pest.
Over a year later, Quiet and his father would still come by every weekend to work on the house. We’d hear the father maintain, “we’re almost done” for months on end. When they’d finally get around to fixing the upstairs, they’d find a piece of paper in James’ bureau drawer covered in decades of filth. We only know the things we hear; either the things we hear for ourselves or the things we hear from others. The rumor is told that Quiet picked up the note, blew off the blanket of dust and held the note up to the sunlight. After he read what James had written, Quiet and his father abandoned the house, and the grass grew past the windows just as it once had. Curiosity filled all of us, and we felt sick when we read what was written:

It’s been rough since you left,
I haven’t eaten a thing in years.
They ate everything when they moved in,
but I don’t mind because I’ve grown to love them
how I once loved you.

They started with the pantry,
they ate me out of house & home:
They chewed through the walls, they even ate our bed;
not that I would get much use out of it these days,
I haven’t closed my eyes since I found you with yours shut.

You’d be disappointed in me,
if you saw just how bad it’s gotten,
but now they’re all that I have.

This house is a shell & so am I.
I died when you did.

-Yours, James

Foreword: The writings you are about to read do not follow the traditional syntactical nature of modern English,
or even what is considered to be proper English. You will find what you believe to be obvious mistakes
regarding grammar but know they were intentional. I liked the way they read, much more than the correct
version—especially with an Irish accent. They felt poetic to me, so I left them.

Summary: Taking place on the island of Ireland in 1908, Hugh, a 28-year-old poet and single parent, struggles
with his faith as his 9-year-old son, Connor, contends with the same bone cancer that caused his mother’s death.

Chapter 1: Son of God

In the month which sets a blaze upon the earth; a blaze upon the drawing breath—I’m the
thrifted soul waiting for the great collapse, the fallout. It was a fine autumn day. The community
weren’t lesser than exceedingly contended. It would have been still the perfect day none less
hadn’t I seen what I did. The splendor that came with the stumbling, I was sure to say: “As
beautifully she lay, ‘neath seasons fiery embrace—won’t she take my hand?”
And if it were to myself rather than directed to her, It would be understood, but not
realized, as my head succumbed to my heart, and my heart in a way it had never been, and
though I cannot know, because I was only just birthed, I feel confident in saying that my heart
had been fuller no more—even as I was brought into this life—than this autumn day.

Now it is the same day of the same month; of the same time of a different year; with the
same chilled gale of the same direction; and the same sun, above different clouds, that are the
same color, but different shapes. And I feel as the clouds are colored. And I feel as they are
shaped. And I feel as the gale feels. But that day, the same day of a different year, I felt as the
sun felt.

She did give me her hand that day, never mind our not knowing each other, and it’s the
hand that lay cold today. The hand that lay cold for some time. But, I tell you, still beautifully
she lay. And not as today will the day be when she is again as elated and as colored as a spring
flower—more of like the day I set eyes upon her it will be. There was a suffering—a great deal.
In her eyes, the eyes that were once a blue to lose thought in, an incomparable blue—of which
not one occurrence did transpire where a stranger did not take notice—were extended to “her
Connor” as her final gift. “My Connor,” she would address him, as if he were anyone else’s,
knowing he was certainly not mine. He’s always like her. Not limited to aesthetics, or intellect,
or mannerism; thoughtful promenades, unexpected behaviors, inflection, or careful diction; he
was just as surely as she was, in an inexplicable sense. Of course, with his being too much alike
came the worst.

Fortunate enough to take her extensions, and unfortunate to acquire so much of her, that
he now suffers where she did. I will watch his (her) eyes evanescence as a sequel. It is an
immense tragedy the more that she will not be here to guide him to death. I would take death, a
grand luxury, so as to spare him, but it is a luxury that is only worth as much as the thought.

“Tell me again,” Connor requests with a weakened tone. “Athair, tell me again. The
name.” “Osteosarcoma,” I tell him mindlessly as if it were a typical response to a child. Glancing
across the table where many of my distasteful compositions were written and, sequentially,
tossed intolerably into the fireplace, I can see him mouthing it out. He is eager to learn more on
the subject and often asks me questions no child should ever have to ask—no parent to answer.
Perhaps to make sense of it. There is nothing to be made sense of.

He will not live to endure growing pains; experience heartache; journey the harsh winds
of age; feel the reverie of one intertwined; see his own eyes through the eyes of another. He is
well-informed and talks candidly about death. I go against my philosophy when the topic arises,
but what am I to say when he asks forbidden questions? Would I be wrong to supply false hope?
Would it be appalling if my voice lacked conviction? But with all of the questions, and the
insurmountable difficulties each one of them shares in answering, there is none more difficult
than his asking about where it is he will venture to—who it is he will find. And if his máthair will be waiting.
I do encourage his theistic explorations, and encourage him more to not rely upon my inferences.

Because of my situation, and my past, oh so dearly melancholic, I do not trust my own judgment in regard
to celestial concerns. I have been much too influenced to speak rationally about such things; therefore, when he
inquires about the topic, I tell him “An impervious man is a paragon of a virtue that is invaluable. It’s
imperative that your beliefs are your own.” And he will ponder on the words as his eyes catch
the light. Reserved. Engrossed. Refined. My son. “Can we go tomorrow? To máthair’s tree?” An
aged beech (‘neath seasons fiery embrace). “Yes, we can go. And we’ll take Bulmers. And soda
bread. And jam. Visit Lough Ree.” “I miss her jam,” Connor said with a smile. “I miss the daylong drive to Garson’s
to help her pick blackcurrants.” His sentimentality never ceases. “We can go to Garson’s when the month is right.
I’ve never made the declaration because I knew you were very much tenderhearted about that. It was your and mam’s expedition.”
I had forgotten about their trips to Garson’s in the summer. I had forgotten many things that Connor reminded me about.
Her death brought with it the taking of some parts of me. The diminishment of memories I had of ‘er. Such a taxation on
the soul, death can be.
“I would want to. It’s just as much ours.”
It’s just as much ours.
It’s just as much ours.

My stare is heavy. He does not see the profound significance of those words, nor feel the
immense emotion they bring. To him, they are just words. To me, they represent his willingness
to do something he did—with someone he loved more than himself—with another. It was a
dejected consolation. I pursue rekindling the fire to redirect my heart-rending state. “Are you
warm enough?” I ask Conner after clearing my throat of despondency, so as to not allow him to
contract my grief. “Yes. Warm enough, athair,” Connor responded (his eyes closed and with a
familiar weariness).

* * *
My boy. The replication of the God I knew as a child. When the time comes, we will
venture over hills and uphill. I will step the fault lines. See the footnotes. Lead you with the hand
of grace to the divine path. And should the sight of greenwood donate to you the thinning of
good strength—refrain from apathy, inanition; rest your eyes. My arms shall preserve thine. I
will speak with soft diction through the susurration. Stride gracefully amidst golden shimmer. At
the arrival, finger the soil with an arm bracing. Embrace you warmly through the wait. Speak to
you: “Child, the seraphic—feel the autumn benefaction. Let its repose comfort your mind and
ease suffering. Let it be the reason for your expenditure, as it is grand. Think of all the goodness.
Your and Mam’s expeditions; blackcurrant jam; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Wind in
the Willows; Mam’s soda bread; Bulmer’s; Lough Ree. Think of Áine. Envision green féar
pastures of good health—running through the foxtail, lying ensconced in rye. And when your
heart can be fuller no more, look up—look at where we sit. She is here, Connor, just as I. Just as
proud of your valor. Unto you speaking: ‘Rath Dé Ort, my Connor. My beautiful Connor.
Áilleacht den sórt sin. I have been at your side all along, beautiful boy.’”
If I wasn’t a weathered man, I should be inclined to say you are indeed the creation of
God. That you walk without fault. That God created too much of himself. With the last breath, I
shall lay you upon the sepulcher. I shall lay you among the shades of Áine.

* * *
Chapter 3: Continual Recollections

“You must be strong. You must be strong for Connor,” Áine spoke softly to me, brushing
the hair from my weary eyes. She was so frail—so worn. Her clothes were ill-fitted; eyes a lesser
blue; cheekbones protruding. We lay in spring warmth atop a blanket, atop the rye. It was a time
with the primrose, and the hyacinth, and the sea aster. Singing goldfinches giving their
condolences to the cool zephyr. A day of true consolation.

“What if I cannot?” I replied without looking at her. “You can, dearest. He will need his
athair. He will need your comfort—your graceful diction,” she said, with a weakened smile.
Turning on her back to view a sky of blue, she said, “It is not that I fear the coming of death… It
is the result mine will have. The impact on those I cherish most. A child needs his máthair. More
so when death comes to him.” There was a lingering pause, a time for consideration. “It is not for
me to choose.” Her face now glittered in the light.

During our walk home, our second-to-last walk home, I walked behind Áine, as I always
did following her diagnosis. Awful to see the fade of such beauty. It took her posture. It slowly
took each feature of ‘er. I had to watch it all. Connor had to watch it all.

Why I always walked behind her is simply a case of metaphysics. Perhaps to hide my
agony. Perhaps to keep it in my mind her declination, not that I once was allowed to forget. It
was to be noticed that on each trip we made, her strength lessened—her stride shortened, her
pace slowed. The sun had mostly gone when we arrived home. Connor was still in well enough
health that he was in the yard playing.

He has always been such an attentive child—always understood the complexity of life
and our situation. (His own.) More aware and accepting of the unfairness and the harshness than
ever. He stared at her as we passed, as he always did, and I could see in him an unmatched
maturity and braveness—knowing she would die, and that he could not save ‘er. He knew that
there was no explanation, no matter how much I thought I deserved one. Áine, unspoken, went to
our bedroom while I unpacked the picnic basket. I decided to give her space and waited in the
kitchen. Then time went by, but she did not make a sound, nor did she come out of the room. I
walked carefully to the threshold, which presented a creak. There I saw the worst. There she
stood at the foot of the bed, in front of the mirror, crestfallen. As if, though she had been aware
of her condition, and knew that death would surely come, for her and her only child, it was only
then that she was forced to accept it. What caused this realization is to remain unanswered. A
passageway where she observed her son’s failure to match his body with his maturity. Where he
would follow behind her to the same bed, with the same declination, to the same ending—even
more unfinished. She was to lose a child and not be there for the loss of a child. She finally
noticed her body—I could notice it in her eyes. The loss of hair. The fade of her eyes. The
discolored skin—hollow cheeks.

“Áilleacht den sórt sin. Still, I see such beauty, Áine. My dearest Áine,” I said to her from
the entrance, walking to brush her cheek, “as beautifully she lay, ‘neath seasons fiery embrace—
won’t she take my hand?” With a cry, she said, “I am unsightly, Hugh. I wish for you not to see
me ill-favored.”

“You are no different than that day. Of no lesser grace. Understand you will never be of
lesser grace.” Her head to my shoulder, boots shining from her sadness, I could see Connor in
the mirror. That was the moment I lost my faith. “Always will you remain as that autumn day.
That perfect day.”

Later that evening, when Connor had been put to bed, Áine continued to advise me. “You
cannot shield him from himself—his fate… the harshness of his situation and the world. You
cannot fill his head with hopeful pretenses, so that he may find peace and overvalue chance. I
know how difficult it will be, Hugh, but it would be inhumane to do such things. He is much too
fragile to hear the cozened, explicit falseness that would only leave him further frayed. And you
must see to it that he remains in faith. Such is imperative.”

“Faith,” I said it aloud. It was not a question, not a statement nor a reply. It seemed a
word of the past—the product of a foreign language, a product of vulgarity. I had great difficulty
pronouncing it and knew not of its meaning.

“I know you have lost yours, but I can’t say the same. And you must not allow Connor to.
It is hard to see—you are blinded by it all, but a purpose lies behind it, and you will come to see
in time. Not everything is to be understandable—you can’t analyze and define all. Some must
remain undefined and that does not make it of any less value. You can only see the sufferings,
but there is so much that remains—of such variegated beauty past the barrier Connor and I have
created. See past it, Hugh. See the pastures of rye we lay atop in spring with fervent love and
unwavering desire. See the smile on your child’s face when the fragrance of blackcurrant jam is
his primary inhalation. Are these not the result of God’s provisions?”

“Then why should he feel the need to take away the grandiose rights he’d given? Why
grant a lesser allowance o’ goodness and a greater o’ heartache?” I received no answer—assume
she had grown tired of trying to convince me.

As much respect as I had o’er—I never found use for such conversations. I’d nod my
head to please ‘er, but I never considered the words, and I was certain never to. Still, I was bound
to something greater and therefore saw to it that I made every effort to not allow Connor to see
as I—and I attempted to instill her in him. I became a mechanical conversationalist when the
subject of theism arose, and it often did. However, I became eventually wildered as my immense
weariness progressed and granted Connor the allowance to form his own inferences and place
faith where ‘e saw fit. I could not imposition him further as I grew to be skin and bone. Because
my heart became something that was only for life’s continuation, and my brain became
something that was only for controlling skin and bone, so I could preserve what could not be
preserved. I could not have grown, in these months of toil, into less of a man.

Chapter 3: Differing Letters

Áine, before her death, wrote to me many letters that I assume were to be addressed
whenever I should myself in the darkest of days, with not a fraction of obtainable consolation.
The realist in me favors the thought of the cancer being the result of—among all other harm—
perplexed thinking, and that that is reason for her letters. But I cannot hope to make it to the final
stages of life with such thinking; I must remain more optimistic and therefore believe she wrote
them with intention.

Her letters, in the beginning, read gracefully and with restrained hope. She was sure to
pursue pragmatism and avoid all falseness, but nevertheless diluted it divinely with grammatical
memorabilia and concentrated on her motherly prose—often mentioning the like of Connor and
their blackcurrant trips. Purposeful words that could undoubtedly be arranged to represent her
fine contour and console my weary mind.

However, as with all things, goodness is certain to be met with its opposite, and the Áine
in her letters soon faded to—what I conclude with complete surety—perplexed thinking that
resulted from her cancer. A passage from such heartbreaking letters: Weightless words from
heavy lips, I can hear—not comprehend—what you direct to me. Your efforts lost meaning long
ago, I’m afraid. It is to my knowledge that I’ve developed an immunity to your carelessness—no
longer to be affected by the harshness of your primal self. Let it be known that I care not of what
you speak of my doings upon the completion of your reading this letter, as it will be the winding
roads of uncertainty and perils of travel that should occupy my mind. No longer to be confined to
Ireland and the making of your precious blackcurrant jam—I shall strive to find self-developed
contentedness, not a contentedness dependent on your opinion or satisfaction.

The true and profound melancholia that is still emitted from this tear-stained paper is that
her confusion was so considerable that she failed to acknowledge the existence of her son. And
while we—Áine and I—had our disagreements, they were to no more extremeness than those of
any other concerning marital relations. And though I am aware of the ignorance that death
causes, as it twists the mind and attempts to fabricate the past, I admit to giving into such
ignorance, but there were no weightless words produced from either mouth—only a then-present
(and still indefinite) love hidden by trivial frustration.

Chapter 4: Among the Shades of Áine

When the day was here, I felt inundated with immense guilt. For I had concluded that on
the day I met Áine—no day henceforth would be of greater beauty or serenity. No day will
compare. That was a false conclusion. No words can adequately describe this day. It was just as
the days should be, but never shall be in my lifetime.

The month fell in autumn, and I did consider her words, so I felt not the need nor desire
to define the peculiar alignment. Áine had positioned the sun so that it would set in sight upon
the hill. With her breath, a consoling and gentle breeze with familiar fragrances that I had long
forgotten. And she woke Connor as she used to and—another complacent undefined
occurrence—he spent the day without pain. He asked no questions and was worried not. My
lovely Connor did not feel in his youth, but well in serenity. I felt the same. We spent the
morning hours in his room. I sat in the old oak chair that was cornered in his view; he sat up in
his bed with blankets at his waist. There wasn’t much conversation, as there was a contentedness
found in listening to singing birds; nevertheless, we never broke eye contact. I had never felt
such comfort. He was a beautiful sight, though he seemed somewhat confused this morning. His
eyes lighted up from the blackcurrant jam on toast and in them, I had my son again. I fed it to
him as her light streamed from the window across the room—the way it shone down on his
face… it was such a gift.

When the hour was four, I dressed Connor in his favorite blanket and found footing to the
Birch. There was a mattress of leaves to be in comfort for the wait—varied as to be expected for
the month. Our backs against the tree—we sat in view of the dying sun that covered the pastures
full of rye, painting a canvas of the dull grass that was desperate for a rain, and shadowed strips
that looked the result of lead from a pencil held in a fitful hand; Connor held tight.

All was silent in the evening—not a sound that wasn’t the wind or leaves. And then the
tears. They were first his, and then mine, and ours together. “In you, I see it all, child. How it
should be. Everything”

“I love you entirely, athair,” Connor replied with tears in his voice. “My beautiful
Connor… you have been so very strong. You have been so fearless, my boy. I love you dearly,
hon… dearly.” I lost my voice to the sadness and could hold him no tighter. And there was half a
sun for half a breath—then a firm embrace that was one-sided.
The wind had gone and emerged was a silence I’d never experienced. I rested his head on
her leaves and brushed his thin, blonde hair from his eyes. “In you, I see it all, child. How it
should be. Everything.”

I lay him next to her. I lay him where he belonged. I lay him to rest; Among the shades of
Áine.

To Build a Glasshouse
by Jessica Awada

The third attempt was more fragile than the first two. The shards that collected in a heap between Elliot’s feet were indication enough. At least it was pretty, he thought, the mountain of pricking, pinching purple pieces elevating his most recent failure. It resembled the mountains within his line of sight out the window, getting coated in a fresh layer of fallen snow. Elliot had gotten too accustomed to the snowfall, because it will always snow in Alaska.

A glassblower he was, sure, but not the finest one. It was a step he had merely been handed down being the one to take over his father’s business. He was often compared to him, the man who seemingly had glass wrapped around his finger, bending and shaping at his will. It was a passion Elliot’s father had also inherited from his own father, who possessed that same magical synergy with glowing, hot orbs of melted glass. What once was a passed on family endeavor fell down into Elliot’s lap as a faltering, misplaced hobby.

Elliot was now marinating in what felt like glass up to his knees, cutting close enough to the skin for him to consider fleeing the studio as if it weren’t his own. As if the shelves weren’t adorned with some of his more successful works: a stunning blue pipe, a set of six textured Christmas ornaments made from recycled glass (the texture being a beautiful accident), and some other works with hidden cracks at the bottom due to wrong, amateur tempering.

He leaned forward again, seconds away from reapproaching the kiln with feigned motivation. He wondered if he could trick the malleable glass before he began forming it. If he were to approach it with the stillness of a tomb, would it believe him to be truly calm? Would the glass and the torch and the blowpipe all be convinced when he would pretend as though he had finally gathered himself enough? That he finally can face them with an understanding of the touch the glass has always asked from him?

The roundness of the torch teased his fingertips before being roughly taken away. He wasn’t sure if he had pulled back from the shock of the ground seemingly beginning to shake, or if the tool itself had run away from his unskilled and unconvincing hands. Yet all at once, yes, the ground definitely began to shake enough where he and the torch were now star-crossed lovers. His own shoes– a pair of hand-me-downs from his father– flat against the ground ached with an unsettling vibration.

The only thing removing him from the hypnotism induced by the shakes was the melody of glass-on-glass combat occurring on the shelves and in the cabinets surrounding him. They shook together, almost threateningly humming at him to leave. He considered it all too well.

The first thing to come hurling down was a vase with a shaky foundation. The rims at the bottom had cracked when he first made it after he had given it less than enough time to set. The glass had turned too cold, and shivered with the fright of its winter. He pretended it hadn’t cracked as he set it up for display, but his game of pretend came crashing down along with the piece as he watched another mound of broken glass being formed.

His eyes winced closed at the heartbreaking sound of glass breaking for the nth time. They stayed closed, anticipating the choir to insist on completing its hymn. An earthquake, he thought to himself.

Growing up and still living in the bustling parts of Alaska, he had experienced a couple earthquakes before. Somehow, this was not the first earthquake he had been through that ended in him being surrounded by glass.

When he was twelve, Elliot’s dad had picked him up from swim practice when the road seemed to have dipped unexpectedly. The car almost tipped onto nearby traffic with the way the ground shook beneath them. The car horns that went off afterwards were almost melodic, caroling one by one. While Elliot braced for impact, his father’s first thoughts had not been his then pregnant wife home alone, or his elderly parents at a resident nearby, nor was it his only son strapped by him with fear splattered across his features. No, as he veered harshly around the corner and past dozens of cars responsibly pulling over to the side of the road, he swiftly aimed for the studio, imagining that same choir of shattering voices of his own art.
“Dad, where are we going?” Elliot had meekly whispered, too shaken up. “Was that an earthquake?”

It had to have been. Elliot had experienced a few over the years of them living in a part of Alaska so prone to mild earthquakes every year or two. Still, the way his stomach dipped and the car skewed with the weight of the ground was enough to have his heart beating through the very spot he wore it on his sleeve. He tugged his sweater sleeves down over his hands as though worried his father would take notice.

But his dad barely nodded, his words rushed, “Yeah, Elliot. Need to go back to the studio to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Can I use your phone to call mom really quickly?”

Elliot had asked the question innocently, only to be taken aback by how confused his father had looked. As if for a second, he had forgotten all about that– how he had a wife and kids and people to worry about. How life was made of more than just glass things.

Elliot was left wondering if that were true at all, as his dad haphazardly and wordlessly handed his phone over to him. And as the phone rang, he felt as though he could see right through his own father– some glassperson of glasskind. His mother picked up immediately, having already had the phone in hand and ready to call her husband.

“Honey? Did you guys feel that, too?” Her tone was calm, but Elliot knew and loved his mom enough to pick up on the way her voice dipped and cracked at the end of her words.

The anxiety lingered in the air for a second before he answered, “Yes, we’re okay. Are you okay?” he paused. “It felt like we got a flat tire.”

“It’s normal,” his father grumbled under his breath, voice tinged with annoyance. “It’s a normal feeling.”

Elliot wasn’t sure where that comment came from, but he was positive he didn’t like it in the way it left his stomach churning. The condescension dripping from his dad’s tone could only be explained by his plethora of experiences with earthquakes, or the harsher possibility that he felt that Elliot was being dramatic in his response. Staring grimly at his father, Elliot sunk further into his seat.

“It’s gonna be okay. Seems like it’s settled now,” his mother’s soothing voice overshadowed his father’s dismissing words. “Just come home soon, please. Can I talk to dad?”

Elliot handed the phone over and watched as his father replied in a series of grunts and one-word replies before hanging up. His eyes were sharply focused on the road ahead, one as clear and empty as the road in the rearview mirror behind them. Elliot imagined people were still pulled over, on the phone with loved ones and waiting briefly in case of an aftershock, as his father beelined for the studio tucked away on the edge of town.

It was only around 4 pm, but the dead of winter pushed for the sun to rest early. And so, the sky was plastered in oranges and purples, clouds bleeding red. Elliot’s dad approached the bends of the road the same way Elliot’s eyes took in the curves of the colors in the sky above him. They did not say another word for the length of the 15 minute drive. Yet somewhere in the distance, the world around them resumed, and the cars and lights started stuttering past them. Elliot wordlessly thanked the cars whizzing past for changing the pace.

He wasn’t sure if he was meant to follow, or if he even wanted to. The way his father stepped out of the car without even remembering to turn off his headlights was enough indication of how thoughtless he was. Elliot was not sure what led him to putting his coat on and hopping out of the car, the feel of road salt hitting the sides of his shoes. His breath came out in a foggy blur, the cold tinting his nose red as he kicked dusty snow aside with his timid steps. Hugging his coat closer to his sides, Elliot headed for the entrance to find his father.

The inside of the building was always a maze to Elliot. The entrance was his homebase, an area marked by a giant front desk and distinctly-shaped stone sculptures off to the side. When he would get lost, he would loop back to that spot and go down a different route. His father had tried to remind him to look for the studio with stained glass windows, but all glass has always looked the same for Elliot.

Today, the potted snake plant by the couch in the waiting area was toppled over. Dirt specks tarnished the patterned rug beneath it. The painting of Mount Denali that usually hung over the left wall down the first hallway was only mounted by one nail, hanging oddly on a diagonal. Elliot was reminded of the trip to the Denali National Park his father had been promising he’d take him on since he was eight. He readjusted the painting, straightening it up momentarily. It fell down in a clean swoop as he walked away from it. He flinched, but kept walking.

Elliot was quick to find the room today, the wet steps of a man who was too hasty to wipe his shoes on his way in being the one marker in an otherwise desolate, quiet building. He noticed the random things that toppled over along the way here and there, but breathed a sigh of relief at no significant damages appearing before him. At least that meant his father couldn’t possibly be too upset.

He was scared to peek in regardless. The door was swung open, meaning all he had to do was lean sideways to catch a glance. His eyes studied the room. Most of the shelves had been braced to the walls, as are most pieces of furniture at most houses and stores around here. It was common practice in a town that faced heavier earthquakes so often. Besides the random tools hanging on the walls that dropped onto the floor, most of the studio was intact. The most significant areas of damage were more recent works that had been left outside of secure units, like the piece his father was hunched over in a corner.

“Dad! You’re gonna get hurt!” he bellowed out, crouching down beside his dad like he had any better idea of how to clean up glass than the way his dad had resorted to: picking at small shards with his bare hands.

The sight of blood-coated glass made Elliot’s stomach turn more than the earthquake itself. He gasped, watching the way his father didn’t even react to him walking in and kneeling beside him. Instead, he picked at the smallest pieces of blue glass, some digging their way into his skin before even being removed from the ground. Elliot wondered how much that hurt, or if his father was feeling any of it at all.

“I can still use it,” his father insisted, picking up the tiniest dustings of glass. He spoke deliriously, “I can still make it work.”

Elliot tried to nod convincingly, but he was scaring him. He had to remind himself of the technique his dad had taught him to stain glass, where crushed colored glass is fused with hot globs of glass. The harsh heat fuses the glass together, painting the glass as a result. Elliot had always thought that to be a beautiful, regenerative part of glassblowing. But now, all he could imagine was his dad getting stuck in an endless loop of using glass to create more, seemingly better glass.

Elliot could immediately tell which broken project was in his dad’s hands; it was a personal undertaking of a blue piece that resembled loops of thread coming together. His father had explained it to him before, his vision of creating something that looked nothing like glass. Something so fragile and fluid that you would doubt it to ever be glass. He had watched him attempt different techniques of bending glass tubing in an effort at getting it to behave as something it’s not.

Elliot knew that, the many times he had watched him do it. That glass will not bend unnaturally, especially when hollow. And that no amount of heat will get it to obey you enough. And that even when you think it had taken the form you wanted, you will notice the way it stubbornly ignored your commands once the hot red fades and all you are left with is glass threatening to shatter in your very hands.

He had told his dad all of that only for his dad to laugh, telling him he didn’t understand glass enough. Maybe one day, El, he had said, when this place is all yours. Two nights ago, his father had spent almost the entirety of dinner bragging about finally figuring out a way. And that his dream of coiled, misshapen and impossible glass was almost ready for him in an annealing oven waiting to entirely cool down.

Elliot was certain that the scraps of blue of uneven thickness and the harshest edges were once in the shape of this impossible project. He could tell simply from the way his father withstood the pinch of shards breaking skin, and from the way there was no other pile of glass being tended to in any parts of the room.

With that note in mind, Elliot stepped away from the mourning man. He found a broom in a supply closet and made haste to clear some mess from the ground. A pile of colorful glass in the shape of broken domes caught his eye. He could make out a few patterns on the side of curved, hollow pieces of red, green, and white: small festive trees, something resembling a garland, and snowflakes.

Speaking up again for the first time since he had walked in, Elliot asked, “Are these the ornaments mom asked you to make?”

He knew the answer already, even though his father never gave him one that night. He got it in the form of his dad getting up, hands cupped together as though he were praying. A mass of glass fell into the trash from his hovering hands before he walked out, still treading murky water on the clean tiles.

Elliot swept up the crushed remains of his mother’s requested gift, leaving them in a small bowl that he would retrieve some years later for a project of his own. He walked back out of the studio, retracing wet steps and ignoring the fallen painting. He found his dad slamming angry, bleeding palms down at the steering wheel of a car that seemed to not want to turn back on.
As his father grumbled swear words Elliot was not allowed to say and phrases cursing his horrible luck, the snow began to fall. It scattered around them like flakes crafted so delicately that they would think the edges could cut them. Instead, they melted into their skin. The cold snowflakes landing on Elliot’s cheeks soothed the heat that had built up. He wasn’t sure what had caused his face to get so red, if it were the stuffy coat inside a tense building, or the fact that his father was becoming less and less the man he thought him to be.
Eventually, the heat in his cheeks subsided, and Elliot refused to bend and crack under these changing conditions. And as his father kept up his parade of scattered insults, Elliot buckled himself into the seat, hand sticking out of the window and catching delicate snowflakes.

–

The snow still falls in Alaska, perhaps now and forever. Elliot noticed that again when he looked out the window. The piles of broken glass in his own studio suddenly did not seem to matter too much now. The broom was still in the supply closet, and the kiln can remelt any glass that decided to come apart, readying it for a new project.

So for now, Elliot made his way down the maze again, leaving behind the crying masses. On his way out, he took note of the photo he had pinned up on a corkboard of him and his mother posed in front of Mount Denali, a trip they took years after his father had died. It remained stationary despite the way the earth insisted on shaking. The shaking had settled by the time he made it to the entrance, a few plants toppling over in a way where it would be just as easy to straighten them back up.

He felt the bustling wind outside resist the way he pushed for the door to open, but eventually the pressure released, and the door opened. Elliot was met with the sight of white snow dancing around him. The snowflakes cascaded like fresh bits of confetti. Luckily for him, it will always snow in Alaska.