By Daniel Liu Prose Winner of the Inaugural Surging Tide Summer Contest Selected by Angie Sijun Lou
Daniel Liu is an American writer. The author of COMRADE (fifth wheel press 2022), his work appears in The Adroit Journal and Diode. He has received awards from the Pulitzer Center, YoungArts, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Columbia College Chicago, Bennington College, the Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose, and others. You can find his work at daniel-liu.carrd.co
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by Christoph GrosseA strong, young man cannot develop on white rice and soy sauce alone. In response to my picky eating as a child, my mother once hid a bit of cod in congee she made for lunch, sneaking some nutritional value into my diet. At least the way I liked it, congee was still technically white rice with soy sauce. The fish blended with the broken rice porridge, and I finished my bowl of jūk none the wiser, my aunt Lily and my mother exchanging a conniving look as I did. I asked them if they were hiding something. Upon learning that I had just eaten fish (which was supposedly "good for me") I gagged in a fit of melodramatic trauma. On paper, we’ve no familial relation, but the intense friendship between Auntie Lily and my parents could be blood. One could consider her my godmother were we a non-secular family. Her family hails from Fuzhou, my mother’s from Guangdong; Lily grew up south of both provinces in Hong Kong. In the mid-20th century, both families immigrated to Manhattan's Chinatown, settling down between the shadows of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. She found a fast friend in my mother, Lucy, a woman who shared her conviction, empathy, and stalwart work ethic. They remain close, all these decades later. Auntie Lily is astute, unconquerable, and assertive. Her dark eyes are always fixed upon you in conversation, formulating a poignant and well-forged response to what you have to say. She’s the first to tell me when she doesn’t think we’d have a good time at a restaurant that I’ve found on social media, and even quicker to steer us in the right direction. “I’ve had better,” she’ll say. “There’s a place down Grand Street that I prefer. Don’t forget cash.” We’ll transition from trendy Malaysian fusion to nyonya’s rich, red Laksa in a heartbeat. I almost always forget cash. She almost always picks up the bill. It’s a big, scary, edible world out there, and I grew up in a central position of a cultural compass rose. East and West coalesced in my family kitchen, two distinct cuisines attempting to find common ground in the mind of a mixed kid. Food is canon in both Chinese and German culture - the former sees folk greeting each other with “have you eaten rice yet?” (“Ni chī fan le ma?” 你吃飯了吗?) - and my home dinner table hosted a confluence of both. Despite these tastes of Canton and Bavaria available to me, I consumed primarily white rice with soy sauce. If I was feeling adventurous, I’d sprinkle on some Maggi Fondor, a German all-purpose seasoning salt of dehydrated herbs, onion, garlic powder, and, most importantly, MSG. A potent sodium-laden umami mix of both my cultures - the staple cereal grain of the Chinese, with industrialized German inflection. An infelicitous Frankenstein’s monster of a meal, with none of his brawn. Humble white rice is an accompaniment to many a dinner table but rarely serves as a meal in and of itself. As a child, this felt like a table I wasn’t Chinese nor German enough to sit at so I grazed from the sidelines. The most surface-level Cantonese foods made up my plate at my mother’s dinner table - rice, pastries, and sweet-sticky charsiu pork. My father’s - Käsespätzle, schnitzel, Wurst, and Bratkartoffeln spiked with caraway seeds (which he used in most everything he’d cook). These Bavarian dinners were closer to the American fast food I saw my friends eating. They were easier for my mind to swallow than the dishes my mother’s sisters would prepare for our family gatherings, like pearlescent, sweet tapioca soup (sai mai lo, 西米露), or sticky rice folded in lotus-leaf (laap may lo mai fan, 臘味糯米飯) like so many presents I left unwrapped on the table. I benched myself on the sidelines of Chinese cuisine. Meals were cause for dissonance; choosing to eat only one thing helped to quell these feelings of push and pull. In a study published in the National Library of Medicine, researchers found that "biracial individuals are able to switch between their two racial identities, suggesting that they are more sensitive to social context than their monoracial peers." Those of mixed descent may recognize the image of a bifurcated home dinner table. Laura Wolfgang, lead product manager at Food52, discussed the dichotomous diet of Filipino and American food in her childhood home: “I have been torn between the Filipino side and the white side of my family for as long as I remember. I never really identified with either side. I don’t really look like either of my parents. I don’t look like any of their family. I feel like I’ve lived a life without a real identity that I can trace back through my lineage.” Now, during our regular catch-ups over breakfast (usually close to her home in Two Bridges), she imparts lucid advice and lived wisdom, oftentimes extending further than our dim sum table, and out to our friends and family. These rendezvous are a study in phenomenology, as we dig deep into the motivations and struggles of those closest to us, to better understand our own experiences. Lily has known my family a great deal longer than I have. She holds a boon of rich historical context with a raw and uncut view of this family she has chosen. Her observations are objective and fair, expanding my understanding of my loved ones. Over lunch, we’ll explore the experiences of my sister, Caitlin, in her decision to pursue a teaching degree, or of my mother, whose conscientiousness and penchant for altruism drive her forever-full social work schedule. We round out our understanding of our loved ones while slurping hot broth out of our soup dumplings (xiaolongbao, 小笼包) at our favorite Shanghainese spot. There’s always white rice at the table, but only as an accompaniment to more substantial dishes. We almost always walk to get something sweet after our meal. Usually, that’s a pastry from a Chinese bakery of her recommendation. I defer to Lily, knowing my position relative to her. She is a sage and pillar of her community, and I am a pursuant disciple. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t yet been able to pay her for any of the flaky, semi-sweet egg custard tarts (daan taat, 蛋挞, a favorite of mine) she’s treated me to. Lily bolsters my nascent knowledge of Chinese culture during these encounters. Whether it’s the food, the topic of conversation, or the streets we walk down as we digest, I am wholly privy to the cultural identity we share. As she points out various details about Chinatown and its inhabitants, I absorb and internalize them with gratitude. I wasn’t always this receptive. As a child, I resented my Chinese culture. The “small penis” and “dog-eating” jokes started as soon as a group of fellow high school students saw mom drop me off one morning, her jet black hair and almond eyes invoking wanton ostracism. Rather than defend my mother, I shirked my heritage. I longed to tap into my cultural heritage but felt it inaccessible and at odds with the social hierarchy I found myself in. The dissonance of my childhood diet was a symptom of my “third culture kid” status - a term I discovered recently and was quick to append to myself. The term refers to individuals who are raised in a culture other than their parents or their country of nationality. In general, they are exposed to a wider variety of cultural influences than those who grow up in monocultural settings. My childhood was peppered with monthly trips to Manhattan's Chinatown, my mother's childhood home, and Bavaria, my father's, maintaining a cultural connection for my sister and me (and, in many ways, for my mother and father as well). I never got to meet my maternal grandparents. My parents decided that we would be better off communicating with our living Opa and Oma in Germany. My sister and I spent our Saturdays attending German school as our cousins learned Cantonese or Mandarin. UNT Department of Psychology researchers examined the relationship between a child's cross-cultural experience and their adult identity. They found that developing "a sense of belonging, commitment, and attachment to a culture" can be difficult for third culture kids (TCKs). These factors play a strong role in one’s self-esteem and identity, as strong identification with a group helps to maintain one’s sense of belonging. When I moved to New York City after college graduation, Lily showed me which hawker off Canal Street sold the best quality oranges. She let me in on where I could find fresh soy milk if I woke up early enough to get in line before the aunties selling were fresh out. My appreciation for my heritage blossomed, as did a wave of self-directed anger and guilt. There’s an impossible gnawing hunger that stems from stifling one’s true identity. As I learned more about my family history, I lamented the time I’d spent starving myself of my ancestral heritage. The pendulum swung and I sped toward a culture I’d spent my childhood years hiding from, with food as my exploratory vehicle. I scoured the streets of Chinatown, looking for the best beef chow fun (gon chow ngau ho, 乾炒牛河) a mainstay dish always present during my family gatherings featuring wide noodles, tender vegetables, and meat piled high, coated in soy oyster-spiked sauce and kissed with wok hei. I spent my Saturdays eating my way down Mott Street with Auntie Lily. I bought myself as many egg tarts as I could stomach. I still felt like something was missing. One of the challenges of being a TCK is developing a rooted sense of belonging, adeptness, and commitment to their culture. I felt wistful when I was unable to join my aunties as they poked fun at my uncles in Cantonese. I found difficulty navigating the menu at Cantonese restaurants I once visited with family, only this time solo and out of my depth. I felt that without almond eyes and jet-black hair like Lily, like my mother, I could never be Chinese enough. I began to ink my body with Chinese iconography. Symbols collected so that I may tout my heritage on my skin and on my sleeve; compensatory in nature, but self-affirming in the way they allow me to be perceived. My mom thinks they are silly - I’d wager Auntie Lily does too. After so many lunches with Lily, and walks with my mother around her childhood home, I came to realize that neither ink nor jewelry could prove my cultural heritage. I had always been presented with the abundance of two cultures, neither of which ever felt easy to wholly commit to. I’ve leaned into this abundance, finding comfort in an ever-expanding biracial identity and diet. Now, alongside my white rice are mounds of boiled fragrant tripe, salty-sweet gelatinous chicken feet, fish balls bobbing in broth, and soups of winter melon. I wish I could take my younger self to Chinatown now, and show him all that I’ve learned about us. I’d bring him to lunch with Lily. I’d buy him an egg tart, and point out those details about his mother’s childhood home that I’ve learned from her. He might start to feel proud of our mixed identity as Auntie Lily takes him by the hand as we walk down Henry Street. We would show him how good the cheung fun is at Sun Hing Lung, because somebody’s got to let that kid know there’s more to eat out here than white rice with soy sauce. From the author: I don’t support the current Chinese state, their systematic oppression of free speech, state surveillance, the genocide of Uyghur peoples, the shunning of Taiwan, and many other injustices. But I, as well as many of my family members, have tried to untangle our pride in our ancestral heritage from politics. Christoph Grosse is a writer-by-night and advertiser-by-day based in Brooklyn, NY. He is passionate about sustainability, hospitality, and generally cultivating a more hospitable world. His written work explores the intersection of food, climate justice, and his Cantonese-German heritage.
by Lucas RucchinForte’s was a place where the rain liked to hide, which was a strange characteristic because the restaurant featured all the standard constituents of a building, including, though not limited to, walls with good posture, a set of double doors with rousing glass patterns, and a roof on which dozed an apartment complex that had no problems with rain. Somewhere the rain hummed, taunting them at every candlelit table. Monday to Saturday, three to eight, Jones and Laurier would step onto the black makeshift stage at Forte’s without catching an eye. Jones would ready himself at the forefront, breathe in, out, let smoke trail and stream from the brass kissing his mouth; Laurier, placing himself at the bench with a back as straight as the keys before him, would dive into the silent orchards of his mind and sit there while his hands did the work. Their sounds warmed the air. They were invisible like the rain. “Crowds this quiet back where you’re from?” Jones would mutter between his glazing impromptus. Laurier would not respond. He could speak English, but he was always sleeping as he played. It was only backstage that Laurier tended his partner’s thoughts: “Only if the food was good.” So Jones set his blame on the chef, even if he was sweet as they come, his desserts sweeter. During his breaks, the chef would listen to their songs if the nearest table was unoccupied. “Lovely work, gentlemen. You keep my waiters so well-behaved. Like a lullaby.” He would laugh a hearty laugh while holding a few coins in his open hand. The money was meant to be offered to them both, but Jones would scoop the donations all into his pocket at the end of his next phrase. “You’re so kind, West. Keep it up in the kitchen.” And then the brass was back on his lips and the smoke was purling. On one rainy day, midday, like every day, the chef arrived not by himself but with another, a suited man, pacing to the black platform together to the rhythm of Jones’s brass bawls. “That’s him?” the suited man spoke in the chef’s ear. The chef nodded. Laurier paid him no interest, but Jones recognized recognition and all its forms. The man beckoned at him to continue. Then this was someone of value, someone who enjoyed tasting his music, chewing and living, feeling it tingle his throat. The man began a light clap as they finished. At the end of his work day—eight o’clock, the time when street-lamps had long replaced the sun—Jones found the man lingering by his car. He was holding an umbrella and he did not look real. The sidewalks and the buildings and the roaming headlights on the street were mirages in the evening rain, but this man was etched so clearly in his eyes, acrylic on watercolour. Laurier had caught a wandering cab and vanished in the grey. He was after Jones and Jones only. The man spoke in a trombone’s croaky tones. “Forte’s. It’s nice. They know what they’re doing. Great clams. Met the owner a few years back. He has a nice wine cellar.” Jones blinked. He could feel every droplet that merged with the fabric of his clothes. Somewhere on the street, a curbside current was strangling an empty soda can. “How do you like it here? Not the food, I mean.” His fingers played around the handle of his umbrella. “You know.” Jones knew. “It’s all right. The pianist’s fun to have around.” “Is that all?” “There’s some freedom. People spend more time looking at their spoons than our gig. Forte rarely visits and the chef will hear whatever. So the set-list’s in our hands.” The man’s chin lifted. Maybe the rain had tampered with Jones’s eyes: he could not see the man’s face as it was hoisted into the streetlight. “You’re a nobody in there.” “Excuse me?” “You saw me. West and I were the only ones watching. You don’t belong in a place like this, sitting in the background. You’re out of your element. You want more.” To lighten the package, he tacked on: “Don’t you?” Jones felt as if this man was reaching around in his inmost thoughts. He did not respond. He let the rain speak for him. “I’m offering you something. The Wayne Floor needs a new lead. Twelve to six, Monday to Saturday. Better hours, better pay. More eyes.” The suited man gave Jones no time to think. “If you want to think more than spoons, you know where.” Jones knew. He knew all throughout the drive home and the hours he spent awake, staring at the ceiling of his dusty, often creaky, studio apartment. He knew that acceptance would mean leaving the black platform in the corner of Forte’s where no one seemed to look, for good. He made himself breakfast in the morning. Jones found Laurier already at the piano bench as he entered Forte’s the following afternoon, like every afternoon. In the absence of customers, Laurier’s solitary chords and licks would ring warmful through the carpeted aisles. But this morning, he only sat, eyes locked on the charts. Jones could hear the whispers of the candles. The makeshift stage leaned slightly as Jones stepped onto it, settled down his case. “Bloom Times?” A quick test of the valves, the shuffling of crinkled sheet music, then the rubbing of brass as the mouthpiece was inserted into the leadpipe. “It’s a day for Bloom Times. We’ll figure it out from there.” Laurier would normally begin drawing out the chords of the specified song. He did not this morning. His hands had fallen slack onto the keys; his dress pants seemed a deeper grey today, fusing with the cushions of the piano bench. Jones stood. “Hey. I know each day feels no different than the rest. But I need a pianist.” Then the pianist looked at him, no longer in that sleepy dream-state that he harnessed on the bench. He was crying. That was not good. At least it was the quiet kind, the kind that spared the shaking hands and mouth but caused the eyes to flood still. “That’s wonderful,” Laurier said. “That’s really wonderful.” His English was perfect, tinted slightly by those parisian silks, a sublime snake song. Then Laurier was grinning and crying, two phenomenons that Jones could’ve never imagined on the pianist’s face. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Thank you for the reminder. This job needs me, doesn’t it? It does.” Jones resisted toying with the third valve slide of his instrument; that would ruin the mood. He was no therapist, but he’d comforted a few troubled unwanted auditionees in his time, to moderate effect. “Are you all right, man?” “Ah, it’s nothing.” Laurier fished out a tissue from his pocket. He was slowly coiling back to normal: straight back like piano keys, sleepy eyes that could see through smoke. “It’s nothing. My wife’s not well, you see. I’m not needed at the hospital, apparently—nope, they’ll take care of her just fine, as they say. They don’t need me to be there!” A quick and reviving breath. “But hey. I’m needed here. That’s good, isn’t it? Keeps my mind off of it. Our playing—it helps both them and I, you know?” Jones knew, as well as his apartment, which seemed extra dusty that evening. ***** He held several lengthy conferences with himself during his morning commute to Forte’s. “He’s another man. He has his own goals, responsibilities. His life isn’t ours. Our life isn’t his. He has a wife, and we don’t. But that’s a personal choice. We don’t need someone else in our life. No—that would interfere with our goals. He has different goals, which is why he chose to pursue a relationship. We could get one if we wanted, of course. But we don’t want to. His wife—” Jones’s pointer and middle and ring finger tapped across his steering-wheel, patterning a chromatic scale to a double C. “He has a wife, and that comes with its own problems. Sickness, for example. Cancer, if we want to get dramatic. But that passes. It all passes. The Wayne Floor will pass. We don’t want that. We want to reach our goals. We’ve been at Forte’s for far too long. It’s time to move on.” And then he was back here, this concrete decision. And then he was conferring with himself again, strucken by his own words. “Another man. . .” Forte’s was back to normal this morning. An euphony of passionate diatonics roamed the aisles. “Good morning,” said the pianist. He’d never said good morning. “Little Sunflower. What do you think?” He’d never suggested songs. Such was Jones’s obligation. “All well. You’re lively today.” “Yes. She’s feeling much better. A miracle, really. The doctor has no words to describe it. A miracle.” Laurier was terrifyingly awake. “Come, let’s begin early. I find it easier to hear my playing when nobody is here. We’ll play well today. I know so.” Jones felt his lungs smothered beneath his feet. “There’s something you need to know.” “Something I need to know?” “Today will be my last day at Forte’s. I’m moving on to play someplace new. The Wayne Floor.” Whispering, gossiping candles. ***** When the suited man had said “more eyes”, Jones had not anticipated the well-dressed smudges gathered beyond the curtain, seated in the golden candlelight unblinking, hands placed on the circular, white-clothed table around which they gathered, all turned towards the stage like mannequins. The Wayne Floor took root in the expensive west of the city, and with expense trailed expectation. So did this audience expect, silently, in the straightness of their backs, in the smoothness of their clothes. Sounding on the stage were some shifting Argentinian tangos. The guitarist and the flutist played well, and they pleased the expectations. Jones’s ensemble would play next, and they were all hoping that they could accomplish what those on stage were accomplishing now. They were fine, but they were not Laurier. They could play, but they could not slip into the fragile sub-space between wakefulness and slumber where magnificent ideas paraded and could only be incarnated by the most inflamed of minds, like Laurier on the bench at Forte’s. Clapping; so the guitarist and the flutist bowed and fled and Jones’s ensemble took their place. All the eyes turned, and all the turning eyes were felt by Jones, on his neck and on his hands, in ice-cold tingles. Then the saxophonist sent out ripping silk, the drummer sifted his kit to texture the air with soft sand, and the walls became very near. Jones readied himself at the forefront, breathed in, breathed out. But before smoke could start streaming from the brass kissing his mouth, he looked into the audience, and saw Laurier seated in the closest table, watching. Jones stumbled. A falling haze hurried his heart. Jones looked away, pushed his gaze into the depths of the audience, readied his instrument again. But Laurier resided there as well, watching. So Jones’s eyes hid behind the backs of his ensemble, but there he saw Laurier’s upright pose, his slim-fit attire, at every seat in the limelight. Four bars passed, six, eight. The trombonist leapt into form to fill the missing melody. ***** For one, please. The doorkeeper was partially thinking of the man’s words, where to place him between the many four-partied and two-partied tables, as well as his familiarity. The latter thought dissolved a moment later. How many single, moderately dressed men with blurry eyes had she seen through all those months here? She reached beneath the guest-list, retrieved a single dinner menu, and led the customer through the aisles. The doorkeeper beckoned towards an unused booth, fit between two other groups of four. The customer paused, looked elsewhere, then asked if he could be placed in the table nearest the piano. The doorkeeper nodded. As they moved, the pianist’s modest playing arrived in their ears, fully defined when they reached the table. The pianist said, This one is dedicated to the health of my wife, to no one in particular. Though the doorkeeper had not led customers into this corner for some time, she felt that something was missing. The doorkeeper asked if regular water was fine, or if a sparkling beverage would be more to his liking. The customer did not respond. Instead, his attention was directed towards the pianist, who was nearing the end of his performance. The doorkeeper asked the same question again. She was met with the same. How many moderately dressed, jumpy, talkless men had she seen? Not many. The pianist finished his piece. A loud clapping resounded about the aisles, the work of a single pair of hands. That customer was on his feet, applauding with a full crowd’s bravado, and the doorkeeper felt her hands come together, apart, together again in rhythm, and the rest of the restaurant yielded to this impulse as well, from those seated on the high-stools of the bar to the parties housed within the booths to the couples warmed by the candlelight near the windows. The pianist’s head turned towards the talkless customer. It stayed in this position for a long minute. There was something in the pianist’s eyes, but the doorkeeper could not discern it from her distance. The clapping was like rain. How many moderately dressed men had come in here and made the pianist smile? The doorkeeper really didn’t know anybody at all. Lucas Rucchin is a grade ten student at West Point Grey Academy situated in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is an aspiring writer who enjoys prose grounded in reality and the human condition. Surging Tide Magazine is his first medium of publication.
by Lucas RucchinThe painter has remained in this grove for six-hundred, thirty-seven days. He had journeyed here for inspiration, new colours to spur the muse, but was met with yet another crowd to please. If he can receive praise from the critics, surely he can cull the same from lowly trees? The painter drinks praise like heady wine, chews it for years, as do the cattle of the Tiber plains chew on grass: the eyes around his works at the Museo Campano, the rows of waiting legs seeking his hand at the Galleria degli Uffizi—he swims in such things. This grove, however, with all its quiet greenery, has never spared his pieces a word. Every morning, the young artist sweeps the forest mire off his clothes, studies the foliage, the twining flora, the sturdy stalks of trees, and addresses them with the sun in his eye: “I promise,”—his left hand has already grasped and fondled the round-tipped brush, and his right, a pencil—“today, I will entertain you all.” So he perches the brush on his canvas and his dreams assume control of his limbs; the muse, now, graces him with a reverie, and handles his hands from strings in the clouds. The sun has nearly finished its arc across the sky when the painting is complete. This piece surpasses the one created yesterday. It is rotated for all to see. His voice echoes at dusk: “Regard, trees. Another masterwork by Signore Demonte, who is so honoured to be in your patient presence. Likewise, you have the privilege of being in mine, for tirelessly over the breadth of two years have I worked to perfect my craft to your liking! I ask that you now fulfill this privilege, humbly so, by serving your duties as my watching audience.” The trees are quiet. Where are the enticed eyes, the polite claps, the arms folded in captivation? His pencil nearly breaks in his grip. “Well? Are you looking? Aren’t you pleased?” His gaze probes the motionless audience. Hours pass as he stands in anticipation, and anticipation turns the tone of his voice to thunder. “My mind has been emptied, my ideas exhausted to satisfy, and you daren’t speak at all? Have you really nothing for me, again?” The sky is dimming and the painter’s legs are begging for slumber. “Tomorrow! Tomorrow, you infernal trees--you will be forced to break your silence! I can see it already. . . my new piece. . . you won’t. . . you’ll have to see it. . . and—” Demonte is being cradled by sleep. His work is tossed into an ever-swelling pile by the foot of one quiet tree. In his dreams, the trees have eyes, the flowers dance to his strokes, and he floats on the wind. The painter has remained in this grove for six-hundred, thirty-eight days. Lucas Rucchin is a grade ten student at West Point Grey Academy situated in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is an aspiring writer who enjoys prose grounded in reality and the human condition. Surging Tide Magazine is his first medium of publication.
by Stephanie RossA sentinel to the Sleeping Giant, its old red bricks define the rigid rectangular building dominating the marina. Each imposing brick laid a hundred years ago striving to represent higher values; elevated symbols of justice. Each brick falling flat in societal need for change. It stood as an old courthouse with incipient foolishness winding up the ivy on its shady side. I crouched at the bottom of this hill the morning after a white police officer was convicted of murdering a young man of colour. The dew on the morning grass soaked through my hiking shoes as I remembered feeling a visceral sense of relief at the verdict. That court ruling was not in ‘my country’ nor from the system I saw towering before me on the hill. It didn’t matter. It was our shared humanity with governing wisdom gone awry somewhere in time. The words “my” and “country” could disperse but my feelings would not. This brick building that had failed to serve its surrounding indigenous peoples evoked the same feeling as those historical circumstances to the south allowing power filled violence to prevail without justice for so long. Sadness. Sadness that this system reigning over us has a history of ongoing abuse. Sadness that we have a world requiring an imposed external system at all. My heart longs for a world in which humanity has a restored heart. Hearts in each of us so filled with love, respect, and humility that this kind of hurt could not happen. Human hearts embracing life in such a way that hurting living creatures of any kind could never be possible. Humanity living in a state of real connectedness; such a pure embracing of each other that we would be a true civilization. This seems a steep hill to climb from where we are now. Yet, this is the ascent I choose each morning – waking to take one more step. On the edge of new creation, this path climbs higher into the clouds than the one I view now. Its peak surpasses my perception of unity. Its wyrd trajectory climbs into a world I long to see; a destined movement into truth if one chooses. As I wake each day and connect with my heart, I move one step higher. Each moment I remember to stay in self-awareness, each time I catch myself in moments of patterns I wish to change, and each time I am willing to examine the parts of my existence that could use a little more uplifting, I hold out my hands to embrace something greater than the physical forms we build here. I walked back up the hill to the red building that had recently surrendered. What was once a place of judgement and punishment had become a hotel, a place of rest. Surrender – a word so often tied to war yet carrying so much more potential. Couldn’t we surrender to the goodness within us without the war? Couldn’t we view this as an active ongoing commitment and not a hopeless resignation? Both allowing and creating the restoration of what has always been within us – waking what was forgotten in the quest to make ourselves better than others, instead of just better. Can we honour the deep longing within each of us to move toward a higher self; a higher standard within ourselves? Perhaps each day we can choose an expanded view. Perhaps each hour we can choose to be a little more entrenched in love. In this way, in each moment, we disperse the divisiveness deluding us. May we all find time to rest in our hearts’ softness and examine the multitude of perspectives available to us. It is time. Stephanie Ross is a pilot, sailor, and home-educating mom. Her writing explores living from the inside out as the adventure of a lifetime. You can find her feet on the ground on Vancouver Island practising Yuan Qigong, walking in the forest, and sharing her approach to cultivating life.
by Steve CarrSunlight sparkled on the glass jar that lay on its side in white sand. Inside it, Itsy opened her bright blue eyes, yawned, and stretched. The jar was long enough for her to comfortably touch the air holes poked into the tin lid with her outstretched fingers and at the same time touch the bottom with the end of her toes. She rolled onto her back and gazed up at the cotton ball-like clouds that slowly drifted across the early morning sky. A mixture of sounds filtered in through the air holes; tides gently lapping at the shore, the screeching of seagulls, breezes rustling the sunburnt blades of scrub grass. Itsy lowered her arms and slid up closer to the lid. She put her open mouth on one of the holes and inhaled, filling her lungs with warm, salty sea air. When there was a tapping on the lid, she put her eye to a hole and peered out. Carrying a gray and white seashell on its back, a hermit crab pushed sand aside with its legs. Its two black eyes mounted on small appendages became fixed on her eye. “Excuse me,” Itsy said through a hole,“can you help me?” The crab reared back and began chirping like a hyperactive cricket. Its antenna waved about frenziedly. “I'm afraid I was dropped here by mistake,” Itsy continued. “If only I could get you to help me remove the lid, then my situation would be much improved.” The crab quickly turned around and ambled off through the sand. Itsy slid back from the lid and reached into her tunic pocket and pulled out a piece of cracker. Fred had given her water and crackers before he put her in his backpack before taking a stroll on the beach the evening before. It was the first time she had been out in the world. The fall from the backpack was a jolt, but she wasn't hurt and the jar hadn't been damaged. As she nibbled on the cracker, she thought about Fred. Surely he knows I'm missing. She put what remained of the cracker back in the pocket. In that instant, the yellow, webbed feet of a fat black and white seagull spread across the glass. The jar rocked slightly back and forth. The gull lowered and tilted its head sideways and with one eye gazed at Itsy. Itsy tapped on the glass. “Can you get me out of here?” she said. The bird tilted its head the to the opposite side and stared at her with the other eye for a moment, then tapped on the glass with its long yellow bill. “If you break the glass you might hurt me,” Itsy said. “Maybe you could contact Mason and tell him I want out of his jar.” The gull raised its head, then walked up and down the length of the jar, struggling to keep its balance on the slippery surface. It did one last hard tap on the glass, then spread its wings and lifted into the air and flew off toward the ocean. Itsy scooted back to the lid and put her mouth to a hole and hollered, “Help.” When no one came to her rescue, she laid back and stared up at the sky. She never imagined that such a large open space ever existed. By late afternoon the sun-heated jar became a glass oven. Itsy stayed as close to the lid as possible, seeking relief in the ocean breezes seeping through the holes. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. She was awoken a short time later when she felt the jar move. “Itsy Bitsy, I thought I'd lost you forever,” Fred said as he lifted the jar out of the sand and brought it to his face. Itsy smiled wanly. “Let's get you back home where you belong.” he said. He stuffed the jar in his backpack. In the darkness, surrounded by a pair of Fred's unwashed socks, an empty water bottle, and a musty smelling book, Itsy sat on the bottom of her jar and thought about the sky. She knew they had arrived home by the sound of the garage door rising, and then a few moments later, lowering. Lifted out of the backpack by Fred, she was placed in her usual spot on a shelf crowded with other Mason jars. As soon as Fred left the garage and went into the house, Mini Mary in the jar next to Itsy's, said, “We thought you were never coming back.” “I wouldn't have, but I couldn't get out of my jar,” Itsy said. “What's the outside world like?” Tiny Teri in another jar asked. “It's has creatures that carry their jars on their back and creatures with big feet that fly,” Itsy said. “But most amazing, the ceiling isn't like the one in here at all. It's blue with floating balls of vanilla ice cream and it goes on forever.” “Did you get to meet Mason?” Mini said. Forlornly, Itsy said, “No, but after being outside and seeing all there is to see, I'm sure Mason didn't intend for us to be trapped in this glass our entire lives.” Steve Carr, a gay writer from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 570 short stories, new and reprints, published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of short stories published. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice.
by Steve CarrSurrounded by tall prairie grass, the rusted remains of the piper cub baked in the afternoon sun. The plane’s right wing lay half-buried in the dirt a few feet from the fuselage. The tail section was missing as was the left wheel. The plane tilted to the left and the tip of the left wing rested on the ground. The chrome yellow paint that had once covered its fabric and steel had been worn away by the extreme seasonal weather on the plains. The seat and stick remained in the cockpit but the gauges on the dashboard were smashed. The windshield was cracked in several places and covered with dirt. Although covered in rust, the plane’s propeller was intact. Bird droppings covered the wing and the exposed part of the fuselage. The skeletal remains of a deer lay in the shadows under the fuselage. Connie’s two children played on a bare patch of ground five yards away from the plane. As a result of a lightning strike, the dirt was black and the grass that surrounded the edge of the patch was burnt. Thomas, age six, jabbed at the ground with a twig, trying to divert the direction a line of ants were taking. His sister, Marie, age four, sat in the dirt and rocked her doll in her arms while watching a garter snake winding its way through the blackened grass stalks along the edge of the patch. Connie had her back to them as she stood near the plane drawing a sketch of it. Drawn to the short, melodic chirping of a meadowlark she looked up from her sketchpad and saw that the bird was perched on the broken trunk of a small tree. When it flew off she watched it until it disappeared in the hazy distance. She turned to look at her children, and not seeing them, thought they had wandered off into the grass. She called their names several times as she walked to the bare patch of ground. Their feet and hand prints were in the dirt. She dropped her sketch pad and pencil and frantically searched the area all around the patch, making increasingly wider circles while screaming out their names. She searched for them until the purple and pink colors of the Badlands formations became more pronounced in the shifting colors of the twilight sky, and then nearing exhaustion, she staggered through the grass to the gravel road where her car was parked. There she discovered her keys weren’t in her skirt pocket where she had put them. Bordering on hysteria she scanned the area of prairie she had just walked through and thought that finding her lost keys would take too long, so she began running down the road toward the highway that led into the Badlands. Thirty minutes later she stumbled onto the pavement and fell to her knees. The man who stopped his car and quickly got out asked, “Are you okay?” “Help, my children are gone,” Connie said hoarsely. Then she passed out. # The room was almost perfectly square with a two-way mirror along one wall. There was a door but no windows. The room was painted battleship gray, including the floor. Connie sat in a metal chair in front of a metal table, hugging herself, fending off the chill in the air. Recessed lighting in the ceiling bathed the room in a harsh white light. A large fly buzzed around her head. The door opened and Detective Bryce and Detective Kline entered, both attired in dark blue business suits. Detective Bryce’s skirt was tight and as she walked to the table she tugged on the material. She carried a manila file folder that she tossed on the table, and then she sat down across from Connie, while Detective Kline leaned against a wall and nonchalantly crossed his arms. “Do you want to tell me the story again?” Detective Bryce asked, a steely look in her eyes. Connie swatted at the fly. “I’ve told it to you and everyone else a hundred times already. One moment my children were there and the next moment they were gone.” Detective Bryce snapped the fingers of her right hand. “Poof. Gone. Just like that?” Connie sighed as a shudder coursed through her body. “Yes, like that,” she stammered. “Why aren’t you out looking for them?” Detective Kline uncrossed his arms and looked at his fingernails. “We cut the grass a half mile in every direction around that plane, had dogs and hundreds of volunteers scour the area for miles around it, used helicopters and drones, and not a sign of your kids anywhere. Where else do you suggest we look?” Tears streamed down Connie’s face. “I don’t know what else I can suggest. You also tore up my home and yard looking for them. You’ve treated me like a monster who would kill her own children.” “Are you sure you don’t have something to tell us about what happened when your children disappeared?” Detective Bryce asked, her voice cold, her eyes locked on Connie’s. “I took them with me so that I could sketch that plane. That’s all there is to tell you,” Connie replied angrily. “They’re my children. I loved them.” “Loved?” Detective Bryce said. “Love.” # Around the piper cub short stalks of prairie grass poked through a thin layer of snow. A steady wintry breeze had kept the snow from collecting on the outsides of the plane, but the seat and dashboard were wet. Scat and clumps of brown fur on the cockpit’s floor were the only signs that anything living had been near the plane for several months. Connie stood on the spot where she had last seen her children. The hair that curled out from her knitted cap was tousled by the wind. She patted her gloved hands trying to keep them warm. Hearing their squawks, she looked up to see a skien of geese flying in V formation across the cloudy sky. When the birds were out of sight, leaving a deafening silence in their wake, she turned her attention back to Evelyn who was standing by the plane with the palms of her hands on the side of the fuselage. Connie stomped her booted feet on the ground, wondering if her toes were frostbitten. Evelyn turned, hesitated for a moment, and then walked to where Connie was standing. “You know nothing about the history of the plane and how it ended up here?” she asked. “Nothing,” Connie answered. “Before my husband died he said he and his friends used to play here when they were kids, but no one in town knows how it got here.” Evelyn tightened the wool scarf wound around her neck. “The pilot was a woman,” she said. Connie glanced at the plane. “Does that tell you anything about what has happened to my children?” Evelyn shifted her gaze to the haze that surrounded the Badlands formations. “No. I get no trace of your children being anywhere near here,” she said. “Why did you bring them out here?” “I felt this urgent need to bring them here,” Connie said. “Something was pulling me, maybe the memory of being here with my husband. We used to come here for picnics and I’d sketch the plane.” “Did you do any sketches of your children while you were out here the day they disappeared?” Connie closed her eyes for a moment, reliving that day, remembering. “No. I only sketched the plane.” Evelyn glanced at the piper cub. “Some souls leave imprints behind for a very long time.” She then looked down at the ground where they were standing. “And some souls leave no imprints at all.” Connie looked at the plane and watched a sparrow fly into the cockpit, settle on the seat for a moment, and then fly out and away. “What do I do now?” “Keep searching, but remember there’s not an answer for everything.” # The spring air was filled with the aromas of rain-moistened earth and sprouting green prairie grass. With her sketch pad tucked under her arm, Connie trod across the soft earth to the front of the plane. She opened the sketch pad and took a pencil from her skirt pocket and began to sketch the plane. She worked fast, filling the page with several images of the plane. Then she walked to the side of the plane, turned the page, and started anew. She circled the plane, drawing it from every angle. Walking to the last place she had seen her children, she began to sketch them as she remembered them just before they disappeared. As if her hand was being guided by another hand, she drew the children with wings. She drew them rising in the air. She drew them flying away. Steve Carr, a gay writer from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 570 short stories, new and reprints, published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of short stories published. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice.
by Julie YoungThe sun and humidity showed no compassion for the bereaved. The undertaker opened six double hung windows an hour before the service but the prairie wind was hot and unsettled and it whipped and twisted the thin curtains made by the Ladies Aid and blew the service programs from a folding chair and finally Pastor Meinken closed the windows. Perspiring mourners wearing suits and best cotton dresses crawled from pickup trucks and used cars and sluggishly mounted the stairs of the little, white, steepled church, their burden as heavy as the anvils in their farm yards. At 2:05 p.m. Mrs. Wizer pumped the organ pedals and as the old instrument moaned and the congregation stood to sing Beautiful Savior, an usher helped Ruth and Theo Schott to the front pew. The open casket was close enough for them to touch it where they sat but they did not. Ruth leaned her head on Theo’s shoulder and held a worn and limp handkerchief over her mouth. Across the aisle Sally Westerly sat looking at the coffin. Under her yellow sundress her thighs were stuck to the pew, and her arms itched from last night’s mosquito bites. Sally was seven. In a little while she and Daphne Lutz and Donald Pfaff would stand and sing Jesus Loves Me for the boy in the coffin and his parents and all who were assembled. Those were Pastor Meinken’s words. “We are here assembled.” Sally stared at the boy’s slicked-down blonde hair and white face and light blue shirt. He was four years old, her brother’s age. The boy looked fine to her, not at all broken or bruised, but when a fly buzzed around his mouth and then over his folded hands, she saw that he did not dash it away and she knew he was dead. Next to her Daphne sucked on the end of one braid and swung her legs rhythmically, as if she had to pee, but Sally sat stiffly, hardly breathing, her eyes intent on the fly. When they close the lid will the fly be in there, she wondered. Then a tremendous sobbing and gasping and groaning rose up somewhere behind her and Sally turned to see Owen Klein. She knew he was Ruth Schott’s brother-in-law and that three days ago he had backed up a truck against a stock tank without knowing that his nephew was there watching water bugs flit and scoot across the stagnant water. Owen’s white shirt was stained and wet and untucked, his dark hair was hanging over his eyes and his face was red and unshaven. His shoulders shook and heaved forward and from his mouth came sounds Sally had never heard from her father or uncles or any man and she knew it was called guilt and she wondered: Did Jesus love him? “Jesus Loves Me” was previously published in The Timberline Review, No. 2, Winter/Spring 2016. Julie Young is a writer and community activist living in Portland, Oregon. Her literary prose is influenced by a Midwest prairie childhood, the wildness of the Pacific Northwest, and her social work career. Julie’s short fiction has been published in The North Coast Squid and The Timberline Review.
by Julie YoungMy sister Sylvie liked rhinestones and cheap perfumes, the sweet kind that make you think of stained, flocked wallpaper in diner bathrooms. Mom called rhinestones and sweet fragrances trampy and a waste of money, but Sylvie had babysitting money and said it wasn’t Mom’s beeswax how she spent it. I was still deciding if Mom or Sylvie was right about this when Sylvie brought home a hair dye kit stamped Marked Down for Fast Sale. All the girls in our family--sisters, cousins, aunts until they turned gray at fifty--had boring, dishwater blonde hair. A girl in Sylvie’s eighth grade room had bleached her dirty-blonde hair to look like Debbie Harry, but Sylvie had no use for Debbie Harry. She let our little sister, Wren, and me watch as she dyed her hair over the kitchen sink. Cherry Red, the box said. The model on the box had green eyes and beautiful skin. I wondered how Cherry Red would look with Sylvie’s blue eyes and acne, but I was in awe of her courage and didn’t mention this. At breakfast the next morning Sylvie dismissed Mom’s judgments with a toss of her shockingly red mane, but when the gym teacher called out during indoor field hockey that Sylvie looked like a floozy, the other girls chanted floo-zee, floo-zee in the locker room, and Sylvie was devastated. She sobbed all the way home from school. Embarrassed for her, I walked two steps behind, my head down. Wren slunk behind me, and everyone could see we didn’t know how to handle bullies. “I only want to be pretty and have popular friends!” Sylvie kicked a stone from the sidewalk onto someone’s emerald lawn. It was true that her only friends were the odd or forlorn kids, like Zoe Binder, who quoted Bible verses, or Dominic Dryer, a chubby foster kid who saw a therapist every Tuesday at ten a.m. He put his head on his desk when he came back at eleven-thirty and stayed there over the lunch break. I felt sad for Sylvie--she was my sister! I said she could have the tortoise shell barrette Aunt Lila had given me for my “classic ‘do,” as Aunt Lila called my bob. But Sylvie threw the barrette back at me and said she didn’t need my pity, she could take care of herself, “and by the way, I hate you and your ‘do. And I hate Aunt Lila!” And she ran ahead of us the rest of the way home, and none of us told our mother about the gym teacher. Sylvie chopped her hair short and let it go back to boring dishwater, but she kept buying rhinestones. She replaced the white buttons on her white cardigan with black buttons that had yellow rhinestone centres. At a secondhand store she found a barrette decorated with six crystal rhinestones. I lied when I said it was more beautiful than my tortoise shell barrette. I wanted so much for Sylvie to be happy. It was around this time that Sylvie started talking about ghosts. “They’re real,” she told Wren and me. “They’re all around, and they’re nothing to be afraid of.” I wondered if Zoe Binder’s Bible quotes had something to do with it, like maybe comparing angels to ghosts, but I didn’t ask. Sylvie might think I was doubting her, and she needed affirmations. Mom stopped mentioning Sylvie’s rhinestones and cheap perfume. She helped her plan a party for Dominic Dryer, who was moving to another state to live with his grandma. Only four kids showed up, and when Dominic’s foster parents brought him, they insisted on staying. They watched without smiling as Sylvie tried to teach everyone how to play badminton (coordination was lacking in all), and soon left with Dominic. Mom had just brought out the cake that said We’ll Miss You, Dominic in dark blue icing. She sent part of the cake with them, the portion that said, You, Dom. After the other kids were gone, Sylvie locked herself in the bathroom, and Wren and I hunted down shuttlecocks in the shrubs and hedge. Later when Sylvie was very sick and in the hospital, she told me that ghosts kept her company in the night. Although I did not believe in ghosts, I was terribly relieved that she had friends. I wanted her to tell me all about them--were they pretty? what did they read? did they read Bridge to Tarabithia?--but by then Sylvie was sleeping a lot, and anyway, my parents did not want me talking about ghosts, which they said were not real, as if I didn’t know. They said my sister was hallucinating on account of the drugs, and that acknowledging the ghosts would agitate her even more. Shush, they said to her as they pushed me from her bedside. We’re here, it’s just us. There are no ghosts. I’ve told Wren but not our parents about the many nights I’m wakened by the sound of a knuckle on my headboard and a sweet scent floating over my face. The first time it happened I was frightened, but now when I hear the knock, I sit up with alert anticipation, ready for the mesmerizing, other-worldly lights that sparkle and dazzle across the walls and ceiling of my bedroom, for the aura of thousands of glimmering, shimmering, glitzy, rhinestones in silver, gold, shades of blues and greens, and always the reds. Red like cherries. It’s Sylvie and her friends. Julie Young is a writer and community activist living in Portland, Oregon. Her literary prose is influenced by a Midwest prairie childhood, the wildness of the Pacific Northwest, and her social work career. Julie’s short fiction has been published in The North Coast Squid and The Timberline Review.
by Lucas Rucchin One-half of her was falling. Cradled in a hazy envelope of ignorance, breaking the surface of forgiveness was something she no longer desired. Living a life spent threading through clouds, she never once pondered about reaching the ground.
In the expanse of her mind, her cries sounded like songs. Her failures warped into beautiful games. Her concerns dulled to steady breaths of boundless air, soothing her whispers instead of making them tremble. The tempo of her heart, steady and uniform, had grown accustomed to her mind’s soundless melody. Flailing uselessly at gravity’s perpetual pull, the girl had once screamed and thrashed, treading at the fiendish darkness that jeered with every call. Every instance she’d opened her eyes, however, her descent appeared less than an abyssal prison and more like a mirror to a vision of a different pair of eyes. Fables arrived to her in gentle performances as the obscure curtain around her revealed its secrets, seeming to know everything about another girl who fell in another world. Less was the darkness her devilish adversary and more so her solacing shroud. But the air was bristly this time. The silence lurked rather than amiably stepping out to greet her. “Wherever are the shadows that help me hide?” The girl spoke mildly, her tone drifting with the serenity of any expectant observer. Her expression remained placid at first, watching the nothingness above her as infinity pushed her along—yet when the darkness did not begin its quiet prelude, the edges of her lips folded. The girl had mastered the art of dancing without a floor for her feet to touch. Twisting herself as she fell, her body spun upright in her descent, glancing at her surroundings with a set of piercing moons. Wrapping her arms around the ebony-coloured dress she’d deemed her favourite, the girl pushed the suspicions away. The performance will start a bit later than usual, that’s all. “You know, it’s rude to make your audience wait.” At ease with her verdict, her hands had moved to the back of her head where they tangled together to form a nonchalant cushion, matching the blanket of air that guided the fall. The girl’s frame winded with the carelessness of a serpent who’d seized their prey—except she hadn’t so begun her hunt. “They always told me that. . . you’re just lucky I cannot just stand up and leave—” The darkness flashed. A film spool accelerating as its pictures illuminated the screen, the starless sky that was the background of her fall blazed with vivid imagery. Slow and flickery at first, the pictures appeared in gradual increments on the dusky canvas—but suddenly she was plummeting faster, and the images blended together into a single word, scribbled onto the blackness with the fervency of a familiar hand. Who. A glint of exasperation. . . uncoiled for just a moment, the sentiment embraced her features for no longer than a second before she revised her pacific composure. Airy and blithe, the tint of her voice swayed with the tranquillity of a spring stream, yet the girl could only barely prevent it from dropping off into a roiling cataract. “Who. . .? Who informed me of that advice, you mean?” Her eyes formed convincingly contemplative bulbs. “I—can not say I remember.” The blackness churned again. This was not its regular presentation. You know, it told her, illuminating the inkiness briskly as if frustrated with her incompliance. The girl’s laugh was tight and bitter, harmonizing with the cold atmosphere. “I have no reason to lie, nor do I have any reason to mindlessly converse with a stubborn limbo.” She stood stiffly in her descent. The aura grew frigid with discomfort. The ribbons of light that formed the messages before her moved and jumbled as if musing over the next words in which they would form. “Never would I once think that—” Wake up. At once her merry bravado fell from her expression like drapery. Printed with the sharp lines and edges of potency on the air around her, the phrase crackled through the girl’s mind, an arcing bolt of assertive lightning. “It—” she began. “This isn’t. . .” Gone was the artfulness of a voice so used to excuses, to artificial apologies, to lying in the face of a thousand promises. “No. I. . . I don’t know what you’re talking about. . . this is real. . . ! You’re joking with me, aren’t you? All inside my mind—how stupid! This is my mellow existence: falling endlessly, accompanied by shadows. . . I am real. . . this is all matter. . . all of this matters. I’ve known nothing more than this, just as you know nothing more than me. . . ! What an awful trick, telling me to wake up. What do you mean. . . ? Wake up? I can’t--I CANNOT WAKE UP BECAUSE THIS IS REAL!—” “Stop it, Alice.” Suddenly she was not falling. Like the tears which she so regularly wiped away, the midnight curtain dissolved around her. Only the echo of the voice that spoke her name remained, reverberating throughout the now-steady breeze, for those who hide in one place for too long are always found. ***** It was a forest of falsehoods that surrounded her now. Dimly lit by amber light, slender trees with dismal stalks enveloped her in a sea of grass that seemed just too tall. The tapestry of leaves veiled the sky’s supervision; the girl could barely make out the blue awning through the threads of illumination that managed to slide its way through the barrier. A place even quieter than the endless darkness in which she dreamed before, she couldn’t escape the chilling sense of augury that cornered her here. She was running rather than falling. Across the swell of herbs that tangled her pale legs with every step, Alice’s bounds were graceless and erratic, a frightened squirrel whipping its legs in every direction with the sound of an enemy's footfall. The inky dress she’d donned did not help in the slightest, the fabric clashing with her forceful lunges. The voice was chasing her. It resounded with the same spaciousness of her tone, yet was without the chirp of underlying deception—rather, it resonated across the morose tree trunks with the tenderness of one willing to aid. It almost sounded like her own voice. “Dreams don’t make you blind to the illusions when you’re awake,” it said with explicitness. Echoing from no particular direction, the voice’s prominence rang across the greenery. “No, Alice. It simply makes them dance in a different spotlight. . .” With an assertive swerve of her arm, Alice reached to her forehead to swipe a screen of condensation away. She’d always feared the day that her unconsciousness would twist the metaphors of her trances into words of reason, and now rationale encircled her like an unyielding hawk. “I won’t succumb,” she was so accustomed to standing on the higher tower that her wavering speech was almost alien-like. “I won’t. . . just leave me alone—” “You refused to grow with those around you, lied to those who loved you. And you wonder why the world is so unforgiving?” “—they never loved me. . . they never spared me a second chance—” “. . . All were fears that you let yourself dread. Tell me, Alice: if you can envision such elaborate spaces of evasion. . .” “You can’t convince me that what’s out there is better—” “. . . Then why can’t you envision yourself facing the disease of fictions that you’ve spread?” “There is nothing more I can do to reconcile.” “You haven’t tried.” “It’s too big an army to face.” “You’ve only convinced yourself of its horror. When will you truly use your eyes to see, Alice? When will you use them to realize and not to hide?” Her quaking breaths were almost as turbulent as the now-rampant wind. The trees no longer looked like trees but like an audience of spectators. As her bounds gradually reduced to subdued paces, Alice noticed the canopy of leaves steadily giving way to the sky’s cordial light. It was almost as if the voice grew clearer as the trees parted, embracing her alongside the warmth of the sun. “When will you use your legs to endure and not to run? When will you use your voice to heal and not to shun?” She came to a stop at last. The barricade of leaves and branches fell, thawed like a layer of winter frost, broken like the first signs of regret during early steps of forgiveness. “It was forever your choice to stand or continue to fall.” The morning light was blinding, yet she looked at it right in the eye. She was no longer housed by the forest floor but by the creases of blankets; she was no longer swept aside by fierce wind but instead cased in the delicateness of daybreak’s ambience. The voice’s utterance still echoed in her ear, and at last the girl recognized it. For the first time in a long time she became whole, two hands steering the same vessel, two mouths speaking the same truth. Two halves of her were standing. |