Vol. 7 No. 3

Winter 2024

Unnamed 5
Editor's Note
Into Stillness
Naked Parrot
tongue and cheek
Lovesong
Southern Cross
Light
What I Learned Tending the Garden
Pap-Smear
Southern Cross II
At the edge
Sea Grape
Father is A Ghost
My Life as a Painting by Vermeer
Cordillera de los Cóndores
Headlong
The Blue Ribbon
Orotund
Invincible, We Thought
The Weight of You
Notions
China Patterns
Unnamed 1
Curiosity’s End
Near and Farther Suns
Unnamed 2
Dead Letters
Feeding the Dying
Microcosms
Unnamed 3
Museum of Light
August 27, 2017
Unnamed 4
Dolls
Neither the One Who Plants
L'Aventure
Go With the Flow
After the Fireworks
Image 4
Find Me in the Whirlwind
Milkweed
Under The Bridge
On the Road to Oruro, 1995
White Terror
Unsent Letters
Walking on Moss, Iceland
Guardrobe
Eurydice
Adrift with JM
Sinkhole
Better Left Unsaid
When the Crossword Answer Was Grapes but All I Could Think of Was Graves
Not For the Faint of Heart
Better Left Unsaid
How to Teach English Composition at a Community College Near Minneapolis, or How I Teach English Composition at a Community College Near Minneapolis, or How I Imagine I Teach English Composition at a Community College Near Minneapolis, or How I Dream I Teach English Composition at a Community College Near Minneapolis
All There Is To Know
Better Left Unsaid
The Nettles
I Have My Mother’s Thighs, and Other Things
Neil Diamond, Denim Moon
Tinctures and Tonics
Forgotten Headstones
Your New Place
The Concrete Patio
On the Block
Nurses Trying
Kandinsky
Trademark
Once my Mother Cut my Hair in the Kitchen
First Tracks
Colors Passing on By
Do Not Be Afraid to Look into the Light
Dear Bone Mother
Nestle
Elegy for the Renaming
Sad Face Daddy
I Will Leave You With This
Operational

Your New Place 

Your new place is almost entirely white. It’s a little unnerving at first, but I guess you never liked the cluttered yet homey, thrifted old furniture and handmade quilts, cozy aesthetic of your childhood home anyway. You were always more of a sleek, modern, minimalist type. Your eyes widen when you open the door and see me standing on the front porch.

“Oh, wow. You look so different. New haircut?” you ask as I step over the threshold and into your new place.

“Yeah, I decided to try the pixie cut look,” I say, self-consciously fiddling with the uneven edges of my haircut, only a week old. I somehow forgot that you haven’t seen me since you left. The pixie cut was an impulsive decision that I made one night around 2 am and executed using the somehow-still-sharp scissors I’ve had since we first outgrew safety scissors. The same scissors that we used to make scrapbook pages of the vacations our families took to Disney together, cut out magazine pictures of our favorite boy band members, and put together our poster for our middle school science fair display. I wanted to build a volcano; you wanted to do something more original. “You look like your same old self,” I add.

“Yeah, you know,” you shrug and laugh a little as you trail off. I force a smile and return a small courtesy laugh.

“Well anyway,” you abruptly change the subject, “why don’t you come inside? I’ll make some tea.”

I follow noisily behind as you silently glide into the kitchen and put on the hot water.  As we enter the kitchen, I immediately notice that, despite the all-white furnishings, you have vases of flowers covering nearly every surface. Carnations—the color of the lemon chiffon cake you had at every one of your birthday parties– practically spill over the top of the stainless steel fridge. The marble countertops are completely obscured by a garden of pale pink roses. One of the dining chairs is buried under a variety of floral wreaths. I stare goggle-eyed as I take it all in; I’m so awestruck that I almost don’t notice when you turn to me and motion to the bouquet in my hand.

“Are those for me?” They’re lilies, your favorites. White in the center that ombrés into a light pink toward the edges of each petal.

“Oh, uh, yeah. I um. I thought I’d get you a little something. You know, sort of as a housewarming gift,” I laugh and roll my eyes at the awkwardness of it all, “you’ve had one or two visitors since you moved in?” My attempt at a joke. You respond with a breathy, silent chuckle. One of those laughs that’s more of an exhale than a laugh.

“I guess you could say that. Just set them down anywhere,” you reply warmly, gesturing all over the kitchen as you turn back toward the tea kettle. I set them gently down on a countertop and sit down at a glass table that looks freshly Windexed, in an ivory-colored, cushioned, dining room chair. God, your chairs are so soft.

You prepare me a cup of chamomile tea, but you don’t have any. I sip slowly and peek at you over the mug while I do so. It’s just so hard to believe that I’m seeing you since you moved to your new place. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like it’s been years. At the same time, it feels like you only just left a few minutes ago. You ask me how I’ve been.

“I’m doing okay,” I say.

“You’ve been having a hard time,” you reply. I have never been good at hiding my true feelings, and you’ve always been able to read me like a book. You knew I had a crush on Dylan Reid in the sixth grade even before I admitted it to myself, and you didn’t reveal that you knew all along until months later when I finally confessed to you. Despite hemming and hawing to declare a major until the spring of my sophomore year, rotating between accounting and nursing, anthropology and art history, you knew deep down I always wanted to study French. So it’s no surprise to me that you can tell just how hard adult life has felt, especially now that you’re gone. As if searching for my first real adult job hasn’t been difficult enough. As if my parents getting divorced after thirty years together wasn’t hard enough. Things got even harder when you got the diagnosis. You, who has always been there for me through thick and thin. Since you left for your new place, I’ve felt so directionless, so lost, adrift in unfamiliar waters without a compass, without a map, without a lighthouse to guide me to safety.

You tilt your head slightly and flash me a sad smile as you take my hands in yours.

“I just—I—” my voice breaks. Fuck. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this in front of you. My eyelids shut tightly as the tears gush forth. I can’t stop crying. You scooch your chair closer to mine and pull me into a hug. You pat my back ever so gently as I cry and wail into your shoulder.

“It’s okay,” you whisper through my sobs. You say it over and over until I finally wear myself out, the tears replaced with a pounding headache. We pull away from the hug. You take my hands again and look into my eyes.

“I don’t have any profound wisdom from beyond the grave to share,” you say, “and I don’t think I can tell you what to do or how to cope. But you can stay here as long as you need, and you’re welcome to come back to visit me as often as you like. I know you better than anyone else,” you squeeze my hands extra tight as you say this, “and I know you’ll be okay. Maybe not today, or next week, or next year, but you will.”

We sit like that in silence for God knows how long. I take deep breaths. After a while, your kitchen begins to fade away. The flowers surrounding us fade too, save for the lilies I brought you. You begin to fade, and your voice becomes inaudible.

“I love you. I miss you,” I read your lips.

“I love you, too. I miss you, too,” I say aloud.

Before I know it, your new place has slipped away entirely. The cool touch of the gravestone as I trace the letters of your name brings me crashing back down to reality. I set the lilies on the ground and sit cross-legged next to you.

I stare out into the distance. A butterfly flits into my peripheral vision and lands delicately onto my knee. Her wings are a striking azure bordered by an inky black, and they open and close in slow motion and then, as quickly as she appeared, she flies away. I watch her fly until she’s no longer visible.

Then I exhale, stand, and walk back to my car.

Share!