Magnets and Ladders

Active Voices of Writers with Disabilities
Fall/Winter 2026-2027

Editorial and Technical Staff

• Coordinating Editor: Mary-Jo Lord
• Fiction: Kate Chamberlin, John Cronin, Marilyn Brandt Smith, Carol Farnsworth, and Cleora Boyd
• Nonfiction: Kate Chamberlin, Marilyn Brandt Smith, Lisa Busch, Brad Corallo, and John Cronin
• Poetry: Abbie Johnson Taylor, Brad Corallo, Sally Rosenthal, Sandra Streeter, and Debra Thompson
• Technical Assistants: Jayson Smith

---

Submission Guidelines

Writers with disabilities may submit up to three selections per issue. Deadlines are February 15 for the Spring/Summer issue, and August 15 for the Fall/winter issue. Writers must disclose their disability in their biography or in their work. Biographies may be up to 100 words in length, and should be written in third-person.

Do not submit until your piece is ready to be considered for publication. Rewrites, additions, deletions, or corrections are part of the editorial process, and will be suggested or initiated by the editor.

Poetry maximum length is 50 lines. Memoir, fiction, and nonfiction maximum length is 2500 words. In all instances, our preference is for shorter lengths than the maximum allowed. Please single-space all submissions, and use a blank line to separate paragraphs and stanzas. It is important to spell check and proofread all entries. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are permitted provided you own the copyright to the work. Please cite previous publisher and/or notify if work is accepted elsewhere.

We do not feature advocacy, activist, “how-to,” or “what’s new” articles regarding disabilities. Innovative techniques for better writing as well as publication success stories are welcome. Content will include many genres, with limited attention to the disability theme. Announcements of writing contests with deadlines beyond April 1 and October 1 respectively are welcome.

All work submitted must be original. We do not accept work written by an AI or any form of plagiarism.

Have You Published a book? If you would like to have an excerpt of your book published in an issue of Magnets and Ladders, please submit a chapter or section of your book to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. The word count for fiction and nonfiction book excerpt submissions should not exceed twenty-five hundred words. Poetry book excerpts should be limited to five poems. Be sure to include a synopsis of your book. Please include information about where your book is available in an accessible format, either an eBook or audio format. If you submit a book excerpt, it is included in your three submission limit. We will publish up to one book excerpt per issue.

Authors under age 18: Please include a statement from a parent or guardian that indicates awareness of your submission of literary work to Magnets and Ladders.

Do you have a skill, service, or product valued by writers? For a minimum contribution of $25.00 we will announce it in the next two issues of “Magnets and Ladders”. All verifications of products or services provided are the responsibility of our readers. Book cover design? Copyediting? Critiques? Formatting for publication? Internet access or web design? Marketing assistance? Special equipment? Make your donation through PayPal (see magnetsandladders.org) or by check by March/September 1. 100-word promotional information is due by February/August 15. Not sure about something? Email submissions@magnetsandladders.org. All donations support Magnets and Ladders.

Please email all submissions to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. Paste your submission and bio into the body of your email or attach in Microsoft Word format. If submitting Word documents, please put your name and the name of your piece at or near the top of the document. When possible, please send your submissions as a Word or txt attachment as many email programs have been reformatting poetry and putting unwanted line breaks in stories and essays. Submissions will be acknowledged within two weeks. You will be notified if your piece is selected
for publication.

Final author approval and review is necessary if changes are needed beyond punctuation, grammar, and sentence or paragraph structure. We will not change titles, beginnings, endings, dialog, poetic lines, the writer’s voice, or the general tone without writer collaboration. If your work is selected for inclusion in a future “Behind Our Eyes” project, you will be notified; your approval and final review will be required. To insure we can contact you regarding future projects, please keep us updated if your Email address changes.

---

Audio Versions of Some Past Issues are Available for Your Listening Pleasure

The Perkins Library for the Blind has been recording issues of Magnets and Ladders for several years. In 2017, these recordings became available on cartridge to patrons of The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. For many of our readers, the Perkins recording of each edition of Magnets and Ladders is their only access to the magazine. Other readers may enjoy the pleasure of hearing the stories and poems performed by the Perkins narrators after reading the magazine online. In the fall of 2022, we were given permission, by Perkins, to upload mp3 files of magazine recordings. Back issues starting with the Spring/Summer 2019 edition of Magnets and Ladders are available now at https://www.magnetsandladders.org/mp3. Please check back often, as we anticipate adding more back issues soon.

---

Behind Our Eyes announces our third anthology

Description of cover image courtesy of Be My AI: The image is the cover of a book titled Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst. The subtitle reads, “The Third Literary Anthology of Stories, Poems and Essays by Writers with Disabilities.” The book is edited by Mary-Jo Lord. The background of the cover is gray, and the text is in yellow. Below the text, there is an image of a bright, fiery sunburst, showing intense solar activity with vivid orange and yellow colors.

Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst is available from Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and soon coming to Amazon.

From the back cover:
In Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst, the third anthology of its kind, six sections comprised of memoirs, fiction, and poetry share slices of life from the perspectives of those living with disabilities. Most works first appeared in Magnets and Ladders, an online literary journal in which novice and experienced writers with disabilities showcase their work. While unique challenges are incorporated into some of the works, this compilation speaks to universal themes and common experiences, involving loss and grief, adversity and fear, love and passion. Subjects such as life-changing illness and the death of a pet are shared with sensitivity and compassion; some works reminding us that a rainbow is possible only in the aftermath of a storm. Heartbreaking, as well as heartwarming, memoirs recount experiences belonging to military veterans, children of immigrants, and parents in the trenches of child rearing. Witty fiction introduces us to cosmic bowling with aliens, and asks us to envision a sky with two moons. Reflective poems describe braille as “ticklish filigree lace on cardboard paper” and fingerspelling that “performs magic in a cacophony of the palms.” In other verse, lyrical imagery paints enchanting portraits of the natural world. To unexpected delight, tantalizing recipes accompany several works; such as those for edible salad bowls, lemon herb bread, cinnamon rolls, and even frozen yogurt pops for golden retrievers named Sammy who “sing the blues.” As a part of the community myself, I am reminded that the only thing a deaf woman cannot do is hear, and the only thing a blind man cannot do is see. This engaging collection promises three enriching opportunities: readers are challenged to question outdated notions of disability; invited to appreciate perspectives that differentiate us from one another; and encouraged to embrace the threads that make up the fabric of our collective human experience. Readers, disabled and not, will be inspired to hold up a mirror to their own experiences, and recognize that, reassuringly, we are all in this together.
Kelly Sargent, Creative Nonfiction Editor, The Bookends Review and author of Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion

---

About Behind Our Eyes

Behind Our Eyes, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization enhancing the opportunities for writers with disabilities. Our anthology published in 2007, “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities”, is available at Amazon and from other booksellers. It is available in recorded and Braille format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

“Behind Our Eyes, a Second Look” is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers, and in E-book format on Amazon Kindle. It is also available in recorded format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. See our book trailer on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk0uIaQTr24&feature=youtu.be.

Several members of our group meet by moderated teleconference twice monthly to hear speakers; share work for critique; or receive tips on accessibility, publication, and suggested areas of interest.

Our mailing list is a low-traffic congenial place to share work in progress; learn about submission requests; and to ask and answer writing questions. If you would like to join our group and receive access to our phone conferences and mailing list, please complete our quick and easy membership form at http://www.behindoureyes.org/mform/form.php.

If you would like to learn more about Behind Our Eyes, or if you would like to make a donation, please visit our website at http://www.behindoureyes.org.

---

Table of Contents

---

Editor’s Welcome

Hello:

Fall brings us cool, crisp air, shorter days, and long evenings to read and spend time with family.

The Fall/Winter edition of Magnets and Ladders is packed with poems, stories, and essays from new voices, along with familiar favorites.

Although our third anthology, Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst is still in the queue to be recorded by The National Library for the Blind and Print Disabled, it is available to download in Braille on their BARD website.

Once again, we welcome a guest judge. Donna L. Halper has generously volunteered to be our guest judge for the nonfiction finalists. She was with us for the Spring/Summer edition, and she worked with us for this edition. Dr. Halper was a presenter during the Behind Our Eyes conference call on August 18, 2023. She has an extensive background. See her bio below.

Donna L. Halper has spent four decades as a professor of communication and media studies, working at several Boston-area universities as well as online for Purdue University’s Global campus. She is the author of six books and many articles, and is widely quoted in newspapers, magazines, and media textbooks. A former radio deejay, music director, and management consultant, she is credited with having discovered the rock band Rush, who dedicated two albums to her. Dr. Halper reinvented herself when she was 55, going back to school and getting her PhD at age 64. In addition to doing ongoing research into the history of broadcasting, and media representations and stereotypes of “the other,” she writes extensively about baseball, as a member of SABR– the Society for American Baseball Research. Her expertise is in the Negro Leagues, as well as in women’s involvement in baseball history. Dr. Halper was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2023, and is the first woman to win the Pioneer Broadcaster Award.

You may see some familiar names in this article written by Dr. Halper in May 2023. Radio and the Blind: An Evolving Relationship – Radio World

We had a record number of submissions, so making publication choices was both rewarding and a challenge. Thank you to everyone who submitted. I would like to give a big thanks to all of the committee members, Marilyn Brandt Smith, and Jason Smith for your hard work and support throughout the production process.

We had contests with cash prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Here are the Magnets and Ladders Fall/Winter 2026-2027 contest winners

Fiction:

• First Place: “The Sleepwalker” by Norm Cowie
• Second Place: “The Ghost in the Machine Shop” by A. Allan Chibi
• Honorable Mention: “The Macedonia Hotel” by Kate Chamberlin
• Honorable Mention: “Marigold and Nessie” by Carol FARNSWORTH

Nonfiction:

• First Place: “Traveling to the Past” by Linda Wright
• Second Place: “On My Own Path” by Melanie Reitzel
• Honorable Mention: “The Big Howl” by Shawn Jacobson
• Honorable Mention: “Froggin’” by Thom Schilling

Poetry:

• First Place: “Poetry” by Brad Corallo
• Second Place: “An Open Letter to Autism” by Sandra Streeter
• Honorable Mention: “Road Warriors Ride at Dawn” by Shawn Jacobson
• Honorable Mention: “Prescription” by Carolyn Martin

Congratulations to all of the contest winners.

The Magnets and Ladders staff hopes that you have a safe and happy holiday season.

---

Part I. A Touch of Whimsy, Magic, and the Supernatural

The Sleepwalker, fiction First Place
by Norm Cowie

I was just walking. You know, nothing weird about that, right?

I didn’t know I couldn’t do it, because, well, I was doing it.

There was nothing alarming about the corridor. It was just a hallway. Linoleum floors, lots of doors, all closed. Room numbers on labels were attached to the doors and there were transparent file folder holders screwed to the wall to the right of the numbers. Some of them had papers; some were empty.

Empty like the hallway. Deserted. And a muted gray.

Then there was another corridor and I could see that the hallways went in four directions. As I made my way to the crossing, there was movement down the corridor to my left, and I turned and saw a small woman in a blue nurse-like outfit and white sneakers walking toward me, looking down at an open folder in her hands. She had brownish black wavy hair, and looked middle-eastern. Egyptian maybe.

As she sensed my presence, her eyes darted up from the file she was looking at, and then she quickly blinked and her large brown eyes widened in shock, alarm and maybe panic. She dropped the folder.

“Mr Winston! You’re walking?!”

Suddenly, I wasn’t and I fell to the floor.

Everything went black.

And then it was like I woke. Or gained consciousness again.

I was lying on the floor, and everything around me seemed brighter, more detailed. The nurse’s aide, now I knew her name was Ana, was taking my blood pressure. The blue of her uniform was sharper now. Other aides were rushing towards us. I just lay there, wondering what had happened.

I mean I was just walking along, and then …

Wait, I was what?

“Are you okay, Mr. Winston?” Ana asked, pulling the blood pressure cuff off.

Another nurse arrived, and looked at me with concern. “What di …?” And then she looked at me more sharply, her eyes darted around the corridor, and she looked slightly spooked. I knew her, too. Michelle. She looked at Ana, and asked, “What happened?”

Meanwhile a couple other aides were scrambling towards us, pulling a
rolling stretcher.

Ana’s mouth opened, and it seemed words just failed her. Then she gasped, “I was just coming down the hall and Mr. Winston was, um, I …don’t know how to…”

“Where’s his wheelchair?” Michelle asked, looking around again with furrowed brow.

Ana gulped, “He, uh, didn’t have one.”

Michelle’s head whipped back around, “He what?”

Ana’s lips moved again and nothing came out. Then she found her voice again. “He was walking.”

Risking whiplash, Michelle’s head whipped around again, and now she focused on me with laser eyes. I was still laying on the floor. The other two aides rolled the stretcher next to me and got into position to transfer me.

Michelle looked back at Ana again. “He couldn’t have been walking. He’s a …” She didn’t finish the sentence, probably not wanting to distress me.

“A paraplegic,” I finished for her.

She gulped, and looked concerned. “Right,” she said after a moment. “You couldn’t have been wal…”

Suddenly another person showed up. Doctor Towne shuffled around the people kneeling next to me and went into a squat. “Mr. Winston,” he said, his eyes concerned and rapidly evaluating my entire body. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I guess.”

“Did you fall out of your wheelchair?” Then his eyes darted around. “Wait, where’s his wheelchair?”

“He was walking,” Ana said timidly

The doctor frowned. “He wasn’t walking. He can’t …” He looked at me and his voice trailed off, obviously not wanting to upset the patient.

The aides then got next to me, he nodded at them, and they lifted me onto the stretcher and then pumped it until I was about waist high on them.

Meanwhile, my thoughts were spinning. One minute I was walking, and then I was on the floor. I realized now that it had been a dream. The muted colors, the lack of detail. This wasn’t the first time since being paralyzed where I had dreamed of walking.

But I had awakened in the hallway, not my bed.

I was definitely awake now. Smells were normal. Sounds not muted. I could see everything around me.

What the heck?

They wheeled me back down the hallway to my room, and the aides slid me back onto my hospital bed. Then they left.

Doctor Towne stayed in the room, his eyes evaluating me. Ana went to leave, and he stopped her, “Please stay, Ana.” She nodded and moved over in front of the television set and stood silently looking at me with frightened eyes. Spooked.

He examined my arms and legs, and then he and Ana helped me to roll so he could evaluate my back.

“There doesn’t seem to be any damage from the fall,” he said, after a moment.

Then he looked at me and I looked at him. Thoughts were spinning in my head, and it seemed maybe his was spinning as well.

Doctor Towne turned to Ana. “You said he was walking.”

“Yessir,” she replied.

The doctor frowned. “You know he can’t walk, right?”

“Um, right, uh, I know.”

“But you saw him walking?”

“Yes sir,” she said with more confidence. “He was just walking down the hall, like a …ahem … normal healthy person would. When I saw who it was, I… I knew he shouldn’t have been able to …um, walk.” Her eyes flashed apologetically towards me. “And then he, just fell.”

The doctor turned back to me, and our eyes met.

More crazy thoughts tumbling through my head. I had walked? And fell in the hallway?

After a moment of thought, he said, “Do you remember walking?”

“Um, yeah. It seemed normal, but after I fell and woke, I can see now it was different. Like a dream. I could see the differences when I woke on the floor.”

“But you actually walked?” he said as if he couldn’t believe it.

“I guess. I don’t know.”

Then he said more to himself, “An aide sees it. Then you are found passed out on the floor with your wheelchair nowhere around.”

Then he focused back on me. “Can you move your legs?” He leaned over and was looking at my legs and feet again.

Good question. I hadn’t tried since the episode.

I concentrated on trying to move my knees.

Nothing.

I tried to wriggle my toes.

Nope, they ignored me like they had been doing for the years since my spinal injury.

Jerks.

“Sorry, nothing,” I said after the futile efforts.

“Hmm,” he said. There was really nothing more he could say.

“We’ll do some more tests on you in the morning,” he finally said, and left the room.

The next morning was a battery of tests. CT scans, MRIs, X-Rays. They took me to PT and the physical therapist had me try to stand assisted by a couple of parallel bars. Then he used a lift to get me standing. I couldn’t do any standing on my own.

A few hours later, Dr Towne showed up again, accompanied by Dr. Floyd, the neurologist who had originally diagnosed me.

They both looked at some papers for a moment, and Doctor Towne looked down at me. “How are you feeling?”

“I guess confused, weirded out,” I replied.

“I can understand why,” he replied.

Then Doctor Floyd spoke. “We evaluated your reports. There is no change to your condition. You shouldn’t have been able to walk. Your condition is permanent, er, I mean, sorry, that came out a little harsh.” He looked at Doctor Towne again. “He walked? For real?” He stared back down at the test results. “It makes no sense,” he muttered. “You said it was witnessed?”

“Yes,” Doctor Towne replied. “And he was found in the hallway with no wheelchair.”

Floyd just looked confused. “There’s no way …”

The doctors both left, with really nothing more than that resolved, and I went in my wheelchair to have lunch in the cafeteria.

That night, I lay in bed, wondering what had happened the night before.

My eyelids felt heavy.

And then … I was walking.

This time I was in the courtyard on the first floor. I don’t remember how or why I was here. But I remembered I used to be a paraplegic, and walking felt so good. I also remembered I’d had dreams about being able to walk again.

“Please, don’t be a dream!” I said to myself urgently. I’d had many dreams where I would say this and then wake up in my hospital bed frustrated and in mental anguish.

But this time it didn’t happen. I kept walking.

Then there was movement to my left.

A gasp.

I turned, and saw one of the workers from the cafeteria, Gail, I think.

Her eyes were widened in alarm, and her jaw had dropped nearly to the ground.

“You can walk now?” she said, choking over the words.

Then I fell.

After the aides moved me back to the bed in my room, Dr. Towne came to see me, his eyes reflecting a mixture of alarm and intellectual curiosity.

I lay on my back, the bed cranked so I could sit up.

He pulled a chair over and sat next to my bed. We sat in silence.

Finally, he said, “You walked again.”

“Apparently,” I answered.

He smiled, appreciating my irony.

Then he said. “There’s no medical support for you being able to do this. Walking while sleeping, while not being able to walk when awake.”

“Sleepwalking,” I said.

He smiled again. “Right. Sleepwalking. I guess that is a medical possibility for some people, but not when a person is injured in a way that makes it physically impossible. Your spinal condition just won’t allow it. When your myelin sheathe was destroyed by Transverse Myelitis, it made it impossible for your brain to use your nerves to communicate with the muscles in your legs.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew why I was crippled.

He frowned. “I’d like to try some tests. Would you be okay if we attached sensors when you go to sleep? Maybe we can see some neural activity to explain what is happening.”

I thought about it. I knew I had the right to say no, because this was a medical assisted care facility, not a prison. I had chosen it because of the combined living conditions with the medical expertise I needed. So, this was exactly one of the reasons I was here.

“I’m all in,” I said.

The next night, I was found on the floor again, the cables from the sensors just hanging from me.

The night after that, I agreed to allow them to strap me in this time, but again, I was found in a hallway, the straps somehow removed.

They tried a camera the next night with my permission. I was found on the floor near the library and the camera somehow hadn’t worked.

They tried having an aide sit in my room to observe, but she somehow fell asleep.

Then two aides, both fell asleep.

They even tried a pastor staying one night, wondering if it was something religious-based.

He fell asleep as well.

I had another meeting with Doctor Towne, this time in his office. He was sitting behind his desk. I was in the wheelchair that seemed to be my home only when I was awake.

He looked at me with a puzzled look. Finally, he ahemed, and said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were messing with us. But, um, it makes no sense. I mean, the cameras, the aides falling asleep, you doing something physically impossible. You can’t walk or stand when awake, but when asleep, you can.”

“Sleepwalk,” I added, a smile on my face.

“Um, yeah. You can sleepwalk.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “It occurred to me that there might be something that allows your brain to bypass the nerves somehow when you’re asleep, and allow it to communicate and control your muscles. I had hoped our tests would discover what was happening. It could have been a cure for all paraplegics. But something is stopping us.” He looked up for a moment, maybe referring to the Almighty.

I thought about the pastor.

Then he continued. “Since we can’t, for whatever reason, we have to just consider your situation. We might be able to use drugs that would prevent you from these dreams. It would just stop this. Would you want that?”

I thought for a moment. Then I said, “No. I mean, these dreams suck when I wake up and realize I am still crippled, but when I’m dreaming, I’m walking. It feels good. So good. I guess I enjoy the dreams. Even though I can’t taste food, and the colors are weird. It just feels good to walk. When I’m awake, I can enjoy foods and reading and stuff.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. “Obviously, I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but it makes sense to me. I have an idea.”

That night I found myself walking through the building again.
It felt so good to walk.

Then I did a weird skip thing. That felt good, too. I almost felt like running.

As I walked along, I saw the caregiver Ana walking around. She gave me a bit of an odd look, but then just smiled. “Hello, Mr. Winston.” Then she continued down the corridor, though I noticed her glance over her shoulder.

Later I ran into some other people I knew. All were friendly, and though there were more odd looks, they all said ‘Hi.” And exchanged weird glances with each other. It seemed sort of normal. I loved it.

Later I went to bed, and then there was a moment of darkness.

My eyes opened. I was awake now. Ana and Doctor Towne were there.

“It worked,” he said with a smile.

Ana was smiling, too.

“By not alerting you that you were walking and dreaming …” the doctor started saying.

“Sleepwalking” I interrupted with a grin

He grinned back. “Right, but by not alerting your subconsciousness, it didn’t wake you in the middle of a hallway.”

“Causing you to wake up on the floor somewhere,” Ana added.

“So this is something you think I can just keep doing?” I asked the doctor.

He frowned. “I can’t think of a medical reason why you couldn’t, as long as you are aware of the actual surroundings when you’re sleepwalking, and you don’t injure yourself.”

“It seemed he was seeing everything,” Ana said.

My face lit with pleasure. “So now I have two lives? One when awake and another when I’m asleep?”

Doctor Towne nodded, “You’re the sleepwalker.”

I laughed.

“I can’t wait to write a medical article on this,” he added.

Bio: After suffering a spinal injury, author Norm Cowie started writing dystopian short stories featuring the theme of disability. Prior to his injury, he had written a dozen novels, and is an award-winning business columnist. Some of his other disability short stories have or will soon be published in the magazines Amazing Stories, Bewildering Stories, and Altered Reality. Visit his website: http://www. Normcowie.com

---

The Ghost in the Machine Shop, fiction Second Place
by A. Allan Chibi

The Lot

In the garage lot, where moonlight touched rusted hulks, a spectral figure lingered. Robert Chesterton—Bob to his friends—kept watch over his ’55 MGA 1600. Death had not loosened his grip on it. “In the scrapyard of existence,” he often mused, “I find myself hitched to the eternal tailpipe of a ’55 beauty.”

In life, Bob had been an engineer, a man of drafts and diagrams, grease under his fingernails, laughter in his voice. He had driven the MGA across Yorkshire roads with his wife beside him, hair whipping in the wind. He had polished its chrome before Sunday drives, proud as a priest tending relics.

Now, in death, he hovered with ghostly tenderness, whispering to some imagined audience. “Just look at her. Even wrecked and ruined, my heart belongs to her still. I don’t see the body as they see it.”

They. The mechanics, living men and a woman, who shook their heads, scratched their stubbled chins, and walked back inside for another cup of tea.

“No,” Bob insisted. “I see her as she was, sleek and elegant. Chrome and curves no woman could match.” He vaguely remembered a wife.

Ghost Society

Other spirits scoffed at his situation. “It could be worse,” they told him. Their grievances were longer‑lived, more tragic: deaths of violence, abandonment, longing for family. Bob, they said, was fresh off the boat or fresh off the train, depending on who you asked.

Ghosts formed a society, unlike living York. They lived with immutable truths: they could not roam more than three hours’ walk from their mania (the object or person that bound them); if the mania moved, so did they; they could not speak to the living, nor to the newly dead until acceptance of death set in; they could not warn their loved ones or say goodbye.

Ghosts called that inability a nuisance, a shame, bad luck. One older ghost called it a lamentable circumstance.

Bob learned quickly of spectral “villages” and “market squares,” overlapping circles of influence where ghosts gathered. He met a violinist bound to her broken instrument, a clerk tied to a ledger, a child haunting a cracked porcelain doll. Each spoke of their mania with reverence or despair.

Of his circle, only two companions shared his mania: motor vehicles. Stan had a Hillman Minx, James a Sunbeam Alpine. Like Bob, they haunted their abandoned machines.

“We’ve talked a few times,” Bob told the oblivious mechanics. “Visited each other’s cars. They’re good blokes. Kindred spirits.”

And like him, they never revisited the places of their deaths.

Courtship of Chrome

Often, Bob held court before silent mechanics. “Alright, lads,” he’d announce. “Have you seen the sleek curves on my ’55 MGA 1600? The epitome of sportiness and sophistication! Aerodynamic sweep, gleaming chrome accents—this is not just a car; it’s a time capsule! A rolling work of art!”

He was like a salesman from another age, pitching his perfect dream.

Stan and James listened with tolerance, sharing their own stories. Bob conceded: “Stan, your Hillman’s practical. James, your Sunbeam’s a charmer. But me, I’m a coupe man. Wind in the hair, the world flying by.”

They joked about a ghostly race someday-Minx vs. Sunbeam vs. MGA. Just for love of the ride.

Bob grew wistful. “Here I am, a phantom with a love of chrome, haunting a garage like a poltergeist with a parking ticket. My afterlife-a never‑ending pit stop.”

The Mechanics

Then came a change. One morning—or what passed for it—the three mechanics emerged: Robert Whitaker, Jake Harper, and Maggie Armstrong.

Whitaker, the owner, ran his fingers over the crumpled fender. “She’s seen better days,” he said in his thick Yorkshire accent, “but we’ll bring her back. Gems like this need a gentle touch and know‑how.”

Bob glowed. “I trust his folksy wisdom,” he told his ghostly friends.

Harper crouched at the engine bay. “She’s got potential, chief. Bit of modern magic, bit of classic charm-she’ll purr again.”

Bob was not sure what he meant but approved of his enthusiasm.

And Maggie—Maggie the Geordie-eyed the tattered interior with resolve. “Alright, pet,” she said, “we’ve got work to do. Let’s sort this mess out.”

Bob cheered her, unheard.

They moved the car inside. Bob perched on a pile of tyres, overcome with joy.

Restoration

“A thrill surged through me,” he told his friends later. “Spanners turned, sparks flew. It was a resurrection of love on wheels!”

The others warned him. “Just be careful, Bob.”

“Careful?”

“Poltergeists come from this sort of thing.” Bob did not understand. Or would not.

He narrated every moment: the frame straightening, the panel welding, the sanding, and smoothing. Armstrong catalogued parts; Harper rebuilt the chassis; Whitaker hoisted the engine.

“Brushstrokes of restoration,” Bob whispered.

“Brushstrokes?” James teased him.

But Bob kept going. “The symphony of restoration plays out before me. Though I cannot touch the metal, I am with it, in it. My spirit intertwined with the dance of hands and steel.”

Delays gnawed at him. Whole days when the MGA was untouched left him seething. Shadows thickened in the garage. Tools rattled faintly on their hooks; a spanner clattered to the floor. Bob’s fury surged like static, alien yet irresistible. He whispered apologies to the mechanics who never heard him, but the rage was not his alone. It was the car’s hunger, and he was becoming its voice.

The Ship of Theseus

One day came the epiphany.

“The Ship of Theseus,” Bob muttered. “If every part is replaced, is it still the same car? And if every part of me is replaced by obsession, am I still Bob?”

Stan and James exchanged worried glances. They told him stories of other ghosts who had blurred into their manias; an old woman who became the cracked porcelain doll she haunted, a soldier who dissolved into the rust of his rifle.

Bob laughed them off. “I’m not a toy or a weapon. I’m an engineer. I know what I’m doing.”

But his voice trembled.

Transformation

The restoration stretched over months. Bob grew lighter, flickers shimmering at his fingers. Mechanics’ laughter blurred into indistinct hums. He called it joy. Stan and James called it something else.

“Bob, old chum… this is where poltergeists come from.” The warning was often repeated, but he ignored them. Still, the garage lights flickered when he grew impatient. Maggie frowned once, muttering about faulty wiring. Whitaker swore the air felt colder near the MGA. Harper claimed he heard a whisper when tightening bolts.

Bob smiled. He was closer than ever.

Vanishing

At last, the day of the final reassembly came.

The MGA gleamed like a dream. The ignition turned; the engine roared. Bob smiled—then vanished.

Stan and James stood by the empty lot. “He’s gone,” James said quietly.

Stan nodded. “Became part of it. We warned him.”

James sighed. “Went into the machine, heart and soul.”

Stan looked at the restored MGA, purring softly in the garage. “He got what he wanted.”

“Aye,” James said, “but at what cost?” They stood in silence, watching Maggie adjust the mirrors. Then James clapped Stan’s back. “Well, mate. Shall we stroll over to the Sunbeam?”

“Aye. Might as well.” They faded.

Behind them, the MGA shone in the dim garage light. And somewhere, in the soft ticking of cooling metal, a whisper could be heard: “Just look at her!”

bio: A. Allan Chibi is a disabled writer with mobility and immunity related disabilities based in Windsor, Ontario. His work spans speculative fiction, uncanny domestic narratives, and metaphysical short stories. He is the author of several novels—two historical fiction works, two fantasy novels, and a fantasy novella—and His short fiction has appeared in House of Long Shadows, Altered Reality Magazine, Infinity Wonders, and The Wise Owl Magazine, among other venues.

In addition to writing fiction, he is a historian of early modern religion and power, and he directs The Distance Learning Association. His writing blends research driven clarity with imaginative storytelling, and he continues to publish both scholarly and creative work.

---

The Trail Day, fiction
by Cheryl cumings

My name is Cesilia. Everybody calls me “C.” No not Sea as in the place with water but just C, like the letter.

I remember. Was it a movie or a TV show where there was this character who stood tall and said, “My name is Mister Tibbs”. I want to introduce myself like that, but I don’t know if it works when everybody just calls you C, like the letter.

Well here goes. My name is C!

I am going to tell you what really happened. It was a Thursday. No, it was a Friday. It doesn’t matter. It was a day. I got up, had coffee and made the decision to go for a hike. Why hike? Well, I live in a city surrounded by trails. Everybody goes hiking. Maybe not true because I hadn’t gone hiking. But that day, I decided to go hiking.

It was a cool morning, and the weatherman promised a day of sunlight. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to breathe deeply and enjoy the air, the sun and the wind. I live alone and that day I made this decision and told no one where I was going. This was going to be a day just for me. I wanted to unplug and to just be by myself. Why shouldn’t I? This was going to be my day.

I don’t drive. Can you believe you can take Lyft or Uber to the start of a trail? I did. The path was everything I hoped and dreamed. There were a few people walking along but I had the trail mostly to myself.

Who knew? True to the trail book, the path started off very gradually. Lots of open space, meadows and meadows of green grass. Sometimes it was bright green, and then the sun would move, and I would see patches of darker green.

I followed the path, and the next thing I knew I was up high. I wondered at this beautiful view. I was at the top of a hill, a mountain, a cliff. I don’t know. What a view. Above me the blue, blue sky, with a few puffy clouds. This amazing tantalizing just barely there fresh pine scent. There are trees and, trees marching along the side of the hill.

I leaned forward to see. And that’s when it happened. I slipped. I slipped, sliding on my back. My legs rammed into a large boulder. And then I rolled off a ledge. And just fell. Nothing but me seeing the wall of rocks. And then the sky and then below. The ground speeding up to meet me. Nothing to hold. Nothing to catch on to. Dropping. Flipping. Dropping. And then the ground. I dropped and dropped and dropped.

I tell you this because I want you to do me a favor. Please tell someone that I’m there, at the bottom of that beautiful view.

Don’t worry. I’m not alive, but I would like to be found. I’m lonely and want to be with my family. Will you help? You are the perfect one because you hear me. You hear my story. Go ahead. Tell someone.

Bio: Cheryl came to the United States from Guyana south America. At the beginning of her freshman year in high school, Cheryl contracted encephalitis and became blind. She is a former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in the Dominican republic. Cheryl Cumings is the Workforce Development Manager at the Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. Cheryl and her husband live in Seattle. Today, Cheryl volunteers her time as a board member of the American Council of the Blind and the Vice-President of her local chapter, the United blind of Seattle.

---

Marigold and Nessie, fiction Honorable Mention
by Carol FARNSWORTH

Marigold and Pug became good friends. They spent part of each day together.

One morning, Marigold noticed a change in the appearance of the tiny spring. The water was dark and cloudy. Pug, a light blue water sprite was sitting beside the water with a sad look on his face.

“Pug, what is the matter?”

He replied, “the Loch Ness Monster is creating a disturbance and it is reflected in all the magical waters.”

Marigold thought before speaking. “How long will the problem last?”

Pug sighed,” the last time this happened it was in 1933 and the waters stayed dark for over ten years.”

Marigold exclaimed.” What can be done?”

Shrugging, Pug replied, “Only the Loch Ness Monster can stop the darkness.”

“Well, I will go and speak to this Monster,” said Marigold.

She flew to the shoreline and traveled north until she saw the opening to the Loch. Loch Ness was as dark and cloudy as the tiny spring had been. She searched for any sign of the Monster. Finally, she landed on the shore to rest and think. The creature must have some magic in it. I will call the magic to me.

“Magic of the water and air, come to me from your lair.”

The waters in the middle of the loch started to toss and turn, as a long necked animal appeared amid the waves.

“Who called me from my searching?”

“It is Marigold a fairy. What is your name?”

The monster slowly swam over to the shore where Marigold sat. “No one has ever asked my name, It is Nessie.”

“O that is a lovely name!”

Nessie sighed and said, “I get tired of being referred to as a monster, I have just lost my way.”

Marigold remembered something that Nessie had said. “What are you looking for in the loch?”

“There is a hidden portal to a different time and waterway.” I can swim through the portal to visit with more of my kind.”

“Well, why can’t you just swim through again?” asked the fairy.

“The portal closed and I was left on this side of the passage.” replied Nessie.

“Why is the water so cloudy and dark?”

Nessie answered as a large tear escaped from her cloudy blue eye. “My tears keep the waters dark.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Nessie told her that she needed time to search for the way back to her friends. But every time she surfaced for air, some human wanted to record her appearance with a photo. Nessie had tried to use her magic to make the air dark, but she didn’t have enough magic to curtain herself and still have time to search for the portal.

Marigold thought aloud, “The fairy people have magic, what if we all helped to hide you with a magical curtain?”

Before Nessie could answer, Marigold flew to the far north to Fairyland. She had met and talked to most of the fairies when she was searching for a friend.

The first fairy lived in a hollowed out log in a bog. Her name was Thistle. “Thistle, are you home?”

Thistle appeared from the log. She was clothed in green moss. Even her skin was tinged with light green. She had several large flowers in her dark brown hair.

“Marigold, I told you I don’t need a friend.”

Marigold replied, “A Magical creature needs the help of all the fairies.”

” Why didn’t say so?”

Marigold told Thistle about Nessie and her need to be shielded from humans to find her way home.

Thistle nodded and exclaimed “This a time to ring the fairy bell to call an assembly.”

Both fairies made their way to the fairy tree. A large silver bell hung from the very top. It took both Thistle and Marigold to ring the bell. Soon, several dozen fairies were at the base of the tree and others were flying to the spot.

When all the fairies were there, Thistle pushed Marigold in the middle of the circle. Clearing her throat, she stammered. “There is a creature, Nessie that needs our magic to help her hide from humans.”

The fairies all agreed to fly to Loch Ness to form a magical curtain to protect the creature from human eyes. Together they flew as a unit until they spotted the loch below. Spreading along the shore, they started to weave their magic into an invisible curtain. Humans could see through it but not see Nessie.

With the curtain in place, Nessie was free to search for the portal. She found it on the bottom between two boulders. Before she returned to her friends, she thanked her new fairy friends for their help.

With the tears gone the water turned clear as the blue sky. Except for Marigold, the fairies returned to Fairyland.

Marigold turned south to visit her friend, Pug. When she flew over the magic spring, she noticed that the silver and crystal lights had returned.

Landing on the shore, she found Pug swimming in the spring.

“Come on in Marigold, the water is perfect.”

She folded her wings and floated to where Pug was waiting.

“I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.”

Marigold smiled and replied,” With a little magical help from my friends.”

Bio: As a poet, blogger and family historian, Carol Farnsworth relates stories with a humorous twist. Born with a congenital eye disease that slowly caused her blindness, she strives to see the light side of life. With her daughter Ruth and husband John, She has traveled by bike, car, and plane, discovering the natural world. Her writings have appeared in online magazines and publications. Her books include Leaf Memories, a chapbook of nature from a tandem bike. She contributed to Strange Weather Anthology, True Quirks of Nature by Marlene Mesot.
Visit her WordPress blog at https://blindontheliteside.com

---

The New Year Adventures of Little Toto, fiction
by Irina Shpolyanskaya

Chapter 1: The Toy Shop

On our great round Earth, beneath a bright blue sky, there once stood a little toy shop in a small English town whose name has long since been forgotten.

Behind its display windows lived dolls, toy cars, teddy bears, clockwork trains, and all kinds of wonderful toys.

But do you know who else lived there?

A real Little Chocolate Man.

Inside his chocolate chest beat a tiny jelly heart. And that was his greatest secret.

“But how did he get there?” you may ask.

Perhaps one day a box of chocolate treats was delivered to the shop, and he accidentally rolled out. Then he quietly rolled a little farther. After all, chocolate eggs can roll surprisingly fast!

That is how he ended up beneath a shelf, hidden behind a little toy lorry, where no one could see him.

“And why was he so extraordinary?” you may wonder.

Because among all his chocolate brothers and sisters, he was known for having the kindest heart. He loved to dream, believed in miracles, and always thought of others before himself.

He did not yet know that beyond the shop window lay a great big world—a world filled with sounds, scents, colors, and wonderful discoveries. A world where the most ordinary day could suddenly become an unforgettable adventure.

And it is on such a day that our story begins.

More than anything else, the Little Chocolate Man loved watching the children who passed by the toy shop.

Whenever one of them looked sad, cried, or lost their smile, his tiny jelly heart would tighten with worry, and little sugar sparkles would appear on the tip of his chocolate nose.

How he wished he could make them laugh!

“Please don’t cry,” he would think. “Would you like to see something funny? Watch how well I can roll from side to side! Isn’t that amusing?”

And so the days went by.

Morning gave way to evening, and evening welcomed another morning. At night the toy shop grew quiet, and with the first golden rays of the sun it came alive once more.

The Little Chocolate Man lay quietly in his hiding place and dreamed.

There was also a cat who lived in the toy shop. She was fluffy and grey, with white rings around her tail. Long whiskers framed her little face, and tiny tufts of fur crowned the tips of her ears.

The shopkeepers adored their favorite cat and often treated her to fresh cream. After eating, she carefully washed herself with her little pink tongue before proudly strolling between the shelves as though the whole shop belonged to her.

She was thoroughly spoiled. But her claws and teeth were still sharp. She loved sniffing everything and never overlooked a single corner.

Sometimes the Little Chocolate Man thought she was searching for him. Whenever that happened, he felt just a little frightened.

“What if she decides to taste my chocolate side?” he wondered.

He would keep perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, while carefully watching her soft paws, long whiskers, and striped tail.

He had no idea that his very first real adventure was about to begin.

Chapter 2: Carolina

That morning, the little chocolate man woke up earlier than usual.

Something wonderful was happening beyond the shop window. White, fluffy flakes drifted through the air, dancing in the wind before slowly settling to the ground. They shimmered in the pale winter light and vanished somewhere beyond the glass.

The little fellow rolled onto his side and gazed outside.

“What could that be?” he whispered.

Just then, the shop door creaked open, and the bell above it rang merrily. A mother and a young girl stepped into the toy shop.

“Mommy, look how beautiful the snow is!” the girl exclaimed.

“Snow…” the little chocolate man repeated thoughtfully. “So those white fluffy things are called snow…”

A smile spread across his face.

“Thank you, little girl,” he whispered.

Curiously, he looked at the stranger.

“I wonder what your name is. A girl like you must have a special name… Inessa? Margot? Lilianna?… Or perhaps Carolina?”

“Carolina, come over here!” her mother called.

The little chocolate man squeezed his eyes shut with delight.

“I guessed right! It really is Carolina!”

Now he could take a proper look at her.

She looked about seven or eight years old. Her fair curly hair was braided into two playful pigtails that bounced with every step. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and her small button nose gave her face a special charm. Beneath a white beret, tilted slightly to one side, sparkled a pair of bright blue eyes. Her red coat, warm white scarf, and light-colored boots made her look as though she had stepped straight out of a winter fairy tale.

She wandered slowly through the shop, admiring the toys like a little fairy exploring an enchanted kingdom.

Suddenly, Carolina came very close to the display.

As she passed by, she nearly stepped on the little chocolate man.

He froze in fright.

But in the very next moment, he wanted with all his jelly-candy heart for her to notice him.

His thoughts whirled like the snowflakes outside, and he began to dream.

He imagined Carolina carefully picking him up, slipping him into the pocket of her warm coat, and taking him home. Together they would stroll through snowy streets, watching people pass by, admiring cars and trees wrapped in sparkling white snow.

And in the evening, they would return to a cozy home where a fire crackled softly in the fireplace.

There he would stand among beautiful flowers that reminded him of the box where his chocolate family had once lived—his mother and father, his brothers and sisters.

For a moment, he could almost hear their voices again.

But suddenly, the dream vanished.

“Mommy, look at this wonderful teddy bear!” Carolina cried happily.

She gently lifted a plush bear with slightly sad eyes from the shelf.

The little chocolate man lowered his gaze and sighed quietly.

The bell above the door rang once more.

When he looked up again, Carolina was gone. She had probably gone home with her new friend, the teddy bear.

The shop grew quiet.

Only the old clock on the wall continued its steady ticking.

Then the little door in the clock swung open, and a cuckoo appeared.

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” it announced importantly.

The little chocolate man looked at it and smiled sadly.

Chapter 3: Waiting

And from that day on, the little chocolate boy began to dream.

What about, you ask?

Why, of course, that the shop door would swing open once again and she would come running through it-the cheerful, laughing girl with the mischievous little nose and two braids. The girl who had become his friend without knowing it.

That morning, when he opened his tiny eyes, he saw that the display window was covered with rain.

“I’m cold… I need to stretch a little,” thought the little fellow.

Carefully, he began to sway from side to side, leaning first toward the doll, then toward the teddy bear, and then toward the little toy car in the corner of the display.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps.

The door creaked open, and a voice drifted toward him.

It was the cleaning lady. She always arrived early in the morning, before the toy shop opened, and the first thing she did was tidy up. Today was no different. She headed straight for the display window.

The little chocolate boy was so startled that he nearly began to melt. After all, he was made of real chocolate.

“What will happen if they find me?” he thought.

Rain rattled on the roof, and the drops began racing down the glass.

Gathering every bit of courage he had, the little fellow squeezed his eyes shut and rolled into the farthest corner of the display.

And then a miracle happened.

The cleaning lady swept her broom through the air and accidentally brushed against a little star hanging in the window. The star swayed, slipped from its string, and gently fell over the little boy.

“Oh!”

At once he realized that no one could see him.

“How wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Now they’ll never find me!”

From beneath the star, he could safely watch everything that was going on.

The cleaning lady was plump and a little clumsy. She moved about the shop like a great steaming samovar-huffing, sighing, and shuffling her shoes in a most amusing way. The yellow kerchief on her head and the apron with enormous pockets made her look like a kind old stove from a fairy tale.

At last she left, and the little fellow carefully emerged from his hiding place.

“Thank you very much, dear little star. You saved me.”

The star swayed softly, as if it had heard him.

For a moment, it even seemed to him that it chimed in a tiny silver voice:

“Are you waiting for someone?”

The little chocolate boy sighed and gazed out the window.

“Yes…”

“Who are you waiting for?”

“A girl with braids. Her name is Carolina. She’s kind, and when she laughs, the whole shop seems warmer.”

The toys had been listening to their conversation all along. Suddenly, the old teddy bear stirred first.

He stretched, yawned widely, and muttered sleepily,

“Why are you waiting for her?”

“Because she’s my friend,” the little fellow replied softly.

Nearby, the wooden rocking horse gently swayed.

“People come and go,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s what they do. Just like the wind outside.”

“But she isn’t just any person,” the little chocolate boy whispered stubbornly. “She’s… different.”

A clockwork soldier hopped down from the top shelf. He always moved as though a stern invisible spring were hidden inside him.

“Different?” he repeated thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s exactly why you’re waiting for her.”

“Perhaps… But I’m going to keep waiting anyway.”

“She’ll find you, your Carolina will!” said the little star in her thin, tinkling voice.

The toys fell silent.

Each of them was dreaming of something of their own—of that happy day when someone would choose them and carry them home.

Outside, the wind struck the windowpane, and the little fellow grew thoughtful.

What if she never comes back?

Dark thoughts began circling above his head once more. His tiny jelly-bean heart tightened with worry.

But a moment later, he straightened up and said quietly, yet firmly, “Then I’ll keep waiting anyway.”

And at that very moment, the sun slipped out from behind the clouds. A ray of light glided across the glass and set the little star glowing with golden fire.

The little chocolate boy smiled.

Then the bell above the door rang, welcoming the first customers.

A new day had begun.

A little later, the cat arrived and, as usual, settled onto her chair to wait for her bowl of cream.

Yet among all the customers and passersby, the little fellow kept searching for those familiar braids.

He sat by the window and watched the street. Some people hurried about their business, some were laughing, some held a child by the hand… But Carolina was nowhere to be seen.

“Perhaps she’s simply busy today,” thought the little chocolate boy. And then he added, “Tomorrow will bring a new day, after all.”

As if agreeing with him, the clouds parted and let a bright sunbeam through.

Sunbeams danced across the glass, whispering to one another about their adventures, and cheerfully winked at the little fellow.

He smiled and went on waiting.

Chapter 4 The Happiest Day

That morning, the little one woke with an unusual feeling. It seemed to him that something important was bound to happen today.

“What if the girl comes today?” he thought.

He rolled onto the center of the soft blanket and began to wait.

Every creak of the door made him tremble. Every voice outside sounded like a sign of destiny. But time passed, and the miracle did not come.

A sunbeam warmed his chocolate-colored side, and the little one drifted off to sleep without noticing.

And then, it seemed to him that warm hands were gently lifting him up.

He opened his eyes… and saw Karolina.

The girl had come up to the shop window, choosing a new toy, and suddenly noticed a small chocolate egg lying on the soft blanket.

“Mom, look!” she cried joyfully. “What a wonderful little one! I’ve dreamed of something like this for so long!”

Her mother smiled. “And you don’t want to eat it right away and find out what’s inside?”

Karolina frowned at the question. “Oh, no! I can buy chocolate anytime. But this one is real… Look! Its heart is even beating!”

The mother looked at her daughter tenderly and nodded. “Alright. Then let’s take your new friend home.”

Karolina carefully pressed him against her. “I know your name… You shall be called Little Toto!” And she gently slipped him into her coat pocket.

It was warm and cozy inside the pocket, smelling of winter, sweets, and the street. Only the sound of passing cars and footsteps reminded him that they were on their way somewhere.

“Little Toto… what a beautiful name,” he thought. “Now I have a name. That means I am truly needed by someone.”

Through a small gap in the pocket, sunlight peeked in, and it felt to him as if the whole world was smiling.

After a while, he was taken out and found himself in a large, bright room full of toys. Karolina immediately set to work. From modeling clay, she carefully shaped small arms and legs for him.

“Now you’re a real traveler!” the girl said.

She placed him on a shelf where a wooden horse, an elegant ballerina, and a proud piggy bank were already standing.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Little Toto,” the little one said shyly, blinking.

“What a beautiful name!” said the piggy bank. “But what’s inside you?”

“A marmalade heart,” he replied softly.

At that moment, Karolina ran back into the room. “No, this won’t do at all! You need proper clothes!”

She carried him into another room and spent a long time trying different doll-sized outfits. Finally, she found a tiny red beret and a matching scarf. “Now you really are a traveler!” she laughed. “But winter is coming—you’ll need mittens and little boots! I’ll ask the nanny to knit them for you.”

And this was the happiest day in Little Toto’s life. His dream had come true-he had met a girl: kind, joyful, and the very best in the whole world.

Now he had friends, a place on the shelf, little arms and legs, a red beret… and a name.

And at night, when stars lit up the sky and a great moon rose above the world, Little Toto wished he could tell everyone about his happiness. But he only smiled, closed his eyes, and fell into a sweet sleep.

Bio: Irina Shpolyanskaya is a Ukrainian writer from the southern region of Ukraine, currently living in Poland. In 2024, she received disability status due to shoulder and arm problems, which limit her ability to work physically.

By profession, Irina is a music teacher. She graduated from a music college and an institute of culture, specializing in choral conducting. Her professional life was connected with teaching children music, music theory, and piano.

Irina began writing before the war. She created stories, fairy tales, and Christian articles for an Orthodox group. Unfortunately, many of her works were lost in Ukraine.

---

The Adventures of Emma the Wonder Cat, creative nonfiction
by Lisa Busch

Author’s note: this story is inspired by a true story of my friend, Deborah Namm’s

I am Emma, the wonder cat. Before I left the place with forty cats, my human spent hours on the floor begging me to stop hiding under the bed. Good thing she waited because I certainly wouldn’t have adopted her otherwise.

However, once we arrived at my new digs, it soon became necessary to teach this creature a lesson because she kept leaving me by myself. It’s impossible to imagine her wanting to be with anyone but me, right? Of course.

So, I built a tower with all her cushions, but that didn’t stop her.

Then I knocked her phone off the hook and played with the buttons, forwarding all her calls to Mexico. She didn’t get any phone calls for a week and kept wondering why.

She received a bill for a thousand dollars. I thought, yay, now she’ll pay for not paying enough attention to me.

That made me happy. But they erased the bill because all the calls were to the same number and they believed her when she blamed me for what happened. Obviously, it wasn’t my fault. I was just trying to get her to do the right thing.

You’d have thought she would have gotten the message and stay home where she belonged.

But no.

So one day I went to the place where I go to the bathroom and picked up some paper that was on a roll, and I unwound it all over her living room, covering chairs, her couch, and everywhere I could, even to the point that she had trouble getting in the door when she came home.

But did she stop going away almost every day?

No.

I got my tail stuck on a book of stamps thinking maybe she’d feel sorry for me then. That didn’t work either.

So I was fed up and decided to escape. I hid under the neighbor’s porch laughing when she kept yelling, “Emma, Emma, where are you?” Other people called me to, but I just stayed where I was. That would show her she couldn’t take me for granted.

I knew she’d find me eventually, and she did. I made her wait quite a while again before I emerged though.

I mean, I know she loves cuddling on the couch. She’s wowed by my purr. So why does she need anyone else?

Anyway after that, I gave up trying to convince her not to abandon me. Instead, I found some fun things to do.

As scandalous as it may sound, my human never gave me not even one bite from her dinner. I sat across from her on the table fixing my hungry eyes on her plate while she kept eating. Ho rude to ignore me like that!

So the moment she became distracted by a phone call or a drink, I rushed over and grabbed as much firm tofu as I could. Yum! It was never enough, but she couldn’t catch me in time to stop my delicious triumph.

My favorite joy was climbing into whatever water I could find. I am a Norwegian forest cat and love to swim. I took showers with my human but she wouldn’t let me get into the bathtub when she was soaping up. Can you understand that weird behavior?

One day while she was talking to a visitor, I climbed in some water she always kept in her bathroom and was splashing and having a wonderful time.

Then the door opened and the stranger walked in. I ignored him. He hadn’t even said hello to me.

But all of a sudden, a big bottom flopped down on my face.

How dared He yell! No one’s bottom landed on His face. And of course I scream too and scratched him as hard as I could to get him out of my way.

She came in to see what all the noise was about, seeing him with his pants down to his ankles.

He finally stood up so I could breathe and run free.

“My wife is never going to believe how I got these scratches on my bottom,” he kept yelling as though he had the worst day of his life.

Can you believe that? Humans are so self-centered and overdramatic.

Bio: Elisa (Lisa) Busch has self published two books: a creative nonfiction memoir entitled, Close Calls: Voices of Love and Fear and a personal poetry chapbook called, Conquering Silence. Links to these books as well as to her blog, Curiosity Corner, and her CD of original songs, Sing Me Awake, can be found on her website: https://www.elisabusch.com.

She has been previously published in Magnets and Ladders, newsletters and Behind Our Eyes: a Second Look.

Lisa has been blind since birth and started writing at age eight. She lives in Pittsburgh with her cockatiel, Coconut.

---

Keeping you in the pitcher, poetry
by Tom Docherty

A picture is an image
That keeps a memory true
A pitcher is a vessel
That stores a liquid too

A pitcher is a player
Who throws a mean baseball
A pitcher is a salesman
Whose tales are often tall

A pitcher is a special plant
With cavities full of goo
It’s something of a carnivore
Eating flies and insects too

A pitcher is a trader
He has a case with legs
The case could contain anything
From buttons through to eggs

A pitcher is a piece of stone
Whose role is as a slab
They are laid out as pavements
They do the job just fab

So, if you think about it
It might well just be true
A pitcher says a thousand words
As I have just shown you

Bio: After early retirement several years ago from the educational sector due to a hard of hearing problem, Tom gained a Creative Writing degree and has been writing poetry, prose, and scripts ever since, with poems and stories published online and in hard copy, along with some competition success. When not writing, he makes walking sticks and crooks. He also walks the mountains of Scotland and Austria which provides inspiration for some of his work. He lives in rural Central Scotland.

---

The Settler of Aquilon, fiction
by Teresa Kelly

The line of people stretched all the way around the block. Joclyn pulled up the hood of her oversized coat and slouched at the back of the line. There were over a hundred people ahead of her. Many of them looked healthy, fit, and well off. When she signed up, the recruiter told her that finances had little to do with it. Passing the tests and doing well in training mattered. She hoped so because she didn’t have money for bribes.

The Space Program sought young, healthy people to populate its ships, space stations, and settlements. So far, they had three moons and a planet ready for colonization. This would be her chance to get away from her family and make a life of her own. To be free.

Standing and waiting for hours on end was a horrendous ordeal. Clerks came out periodically to check papers and send people away. Many of them wept in disappointment. Twice, she ducked down as familiar faces passed by. Hours later, she was third in line; the sun was setting, and behind her the line stretched all the way around the block. A marked chill settled in the air. She saw her brothers on the far side of the street, scanning the lineup. Please don’t let them see me. I’m almost inside and out of sight, she thought.

“What you tink you’re doing? No, f’ing way. Get your ass out-ta dat line!” Her brothers Jerry and Tom grabbed her by the neck and dragged her out of line. With a scream, she wrapped her arms around a post and kicked at them. With one swing of a fist, she broke Jerry’s nose. Tom cursed her and slapped his hand over her mouth until her teeth sank deep into the side of his hand. Blood spilled into her mouth. He’ll have that scar for the rest of his life, she thought. She twisted around and spat blood in Tom’s face. Two guards slammed her brothers with clubs until they let go of her.

“This is a family matter.” Jerry snarled as he wiped blood from his face. “None of your business, or you’ll go before the courts!”

“I’m free, and I’m of age. Got my papers right here. You have no right.”

People stared in sympathy. More guards showed up. They took both of her brothers into custody. A soldier escorted the head clerk outside. He looked over her papers, then looked at the stamp on her arm.

“Everything’s in order, miss. Guard, it would be best if you escort the young woman to the testing site. Gentlemen, Joclyn Doyle is a free woman. She is of age. Her papers are in order. You have no jurisdiction over her. You may leave without incident if you cease your interference.”

The guards walked her to the Sergeant’s office. The woman looked up as she entered. “Miss Doyle. I wanted a word with you. Please sit down.” Her warm smile was contagious, but Joclyn’s face was burning with shame. She swallowed.
“I want to apologize for the scene my family members made.”

“Don’t apologize. It has happened before. Some people fear change. To them, space is a great dark unknown. Let that go. I want to tell you how impressive your resume reads. You are a competitive swimmer, runner, and marksman, and you have a strong interest in linguistics. Anything else we don’t know about you?”

“I volunteer at the botanical conservatory near my home and speak three languages.”

Her eyebrows crawled up. “This gets better and better. I will say this, Miss Doyle. You have some amazing skills. I don’t want to lose a woman like you. If there is any more trouble, bring it directly to me.”

“Thank you.”

Joclyn stood in the vestibule and watched her family stalk away stiff-backed and angry. The looks they sent her way told her it wasn’t over. At least, now she had a friend in the Sergeant. When they turned the corner, she breathed a sigh of relief. Then the testers called her name.

Tests, tests, and more tests. After midnight, she followed two dozen others into the cafeteria. They helped themselves to the high-end food and water. As they ate, the Sergeant returned with information packages.

“You have all passed the fitness and health tests. Thank you all for joining us. We commend you for your courage and sense of adventure. This week, we will conduct additional tests to determine which locations best suit your aptitudes and physical and psychological abilities. The space program wants this to work for all of us.

Most of you, if not all of you, will be presented with more than one opportunity. At that point, we’ll start the training for your future situation. It will be a long process. Much of it will be very enjoyable. Training will commence tomorrow at noon and will take approximately six months. Additional training will take place once you are in transit. Take the next few days to thoroughly study the information packages before making your choices. If you need assistance, speak to one of the counsellors listed on the front page.”

Joclyn was stunned. She’d passed and was in the program. Half staggering, dragging her feet, she made her way to her cubicle and collapsed on the bunk. At seven in the morning, she woke and was the first in the showers. Staff were laying out breakfast as she worked her way through the thick booklet.

All three moons were different. Each had an artificial habitat with a small satellite population. The high ceilings and broad viewing windows made the places appear luxurious and roomy. A variety of career and employment opportunities existed. That’s where settlers like her would come in. All the moons and the planet had technical, greenhouse, and farming facilities to supply and support the local population and the spaceships. The third moon would act as a repair and storage facility. The planet Aquilon was the plum.
Three times the size of Earth, it had a breathable atmosphere, stronger gravity, and ice caps at the poles. There were a dozen major land masses, five huge oceans, and two dozen seas. The sky was blue-green. At present, a small population of workers were exploring and documenting the flora and fauna. So far, they had not found any signs of intelligent life. Once they were sure, the colonists would receive land grants.

That night, she stood on the roof of the facility, gazing at the sky, wishing she could see the star system that held Aquilon. Hopefully, it would become her new home. As she turned away, Sergeant O’Neil stepped onto the roof. She smiled at Joclyn. “You want to see it, don’t you? Aquilon, I mean.”

“Oh. More than you know. But how?”

“We have several videos in the office.”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“It’s beautiful, Joclyn. Come on. Let’s take a look, shall we!”

It takes five to seven years to train an astronaut. We were settlers, not astronauts. We’d get six months of training on Earth, additional training while in transit, and a few weeks to familiarize ourselves with our new home. Joclyn wanted to settle on Aquilon. The brief view of it had made her yearn for her new home. I won’t know if I get my wish for six months, she thought. She sighed, knowing anything would be acceptable. The thought of a whole new life stretching out before her made her dizzy. So many choices! Leaning forward with her face pressed against the cool window glass, gazing at the stars, she wept with joy.

Three days later, the Sergeant called her to the office. Her family had launched a challenge based on financial need. The program provided her with a lawyer to attend the initial meeting. Ms. Markland was good and came as prepared as anyone could be. And she had an ace up her sleeve. She asked the lawyer to step out for a moment.

Then I spoke. “I won’t pull out of the program to become a brood mare, a nanny or end up spending the rest of my life working in the plaza and selling blood, bone marrow or organs until there is nothing left of me.”

Her mother bristled. “It’s been our life for generations. Not good enough for you? Who do you think you are? Think you’re Royalty!”

“You have no financial need of me. I know you don’t report the income from the bootlegging, the smuggling, the slavery, or the drugs Jerry and Tom cook up in the back shed. And you rent rooms to illegals. Leave me alone, or I’ll sink you all.” Joclyn stood up and walked away.

Bio: Ms. Kelly lives in Northern Ontario. After writing many short stories, she has decided to formalize her passion. A collection of short stories is ready for publication. Her genre is speculative fiction featuring vampires, witches, dragons, and elves. She is focusing on developing proficiency in self-editing.

Limitations include asthma, bronchitis, heart damage and chronic pain. Ruptured discs, a damaged left knee and neck issues have limited her mobility. This has led to a whole new direction in her life.

---

The Orchard of Days and the Fruit That Forgets, fiction
by A. Allan Chibi

The village of Mallow lay cloaked in frost and shadow; its stone cottages huddled beneath the low sky like tired ghosts. Winters here were harsh, but this one-this endless, biting winter—seemed to stretch like a curse, settling deep into the bones of the land and its people.

Aedan O’Neil was a simple man, his hands calloused from years of toil, his heart heavy from losses he barely spoke of. His family, however, was one watched closely by the Winter King’s court, or so it was said, making his lineage one marked by old favours and older debts, though no one in Mallow dared speak openly of such things.

On a night when the moon was hidden behind thick clouds and the wind whistled like a mournful song through the skeletal branches, Aedan wandered near the woods that edged the village. The trees stood black and silent, their twisted forms etched against the snow like ancient runes.

It was there he found the fox.

At first, the creature seemed ordinary, just a small, bedraggled fox, its reddish fur frosted with ice, eyes glinting like shards of crystal. It shivered in the cold, trapped in a tangle of brambles. Without hesitation, Aedan knelt and freed the creature, wrapping it in his cloak before carrying it home.

That night, by the fire’s dying embers, the fox transformed. Its slender form shimmered and stretched, sprouting delicate wings of frost and light. From the shadows emerged a voice. It was soft but sharp as icicles. Tatterleaf’s envoy, a pooka sent from the Winter King’s court. “You have shown kindness,” the creature said, its eyes reflecting the frost bound woods beyond. “For this, a gift.”

From its hand came a tiny sapling, glowing faintly with silver light, leaves like threads of moonbeam.

“Plant it where the earth is dark and cold. Come morning, the tree shall rise.”

Aedan obeyed the directions, planting the sapling at the edge of his orchard where it was sure to get plenty of sun. When the first light of dawn crept across the snow the following morning, he found himself staring at a towering tree that pulsed with an ethereal glow. Its leaves shimmered silver, and upon its branches hung fruit, round orbs that sparkled like frozen stars, each one humming with a strange, haunting magic.

He plucked one and bit into it cautiously as the fox creature had not forbidden it. The fruit tasted like sunlight after rain. It was warm, sweet, and alive. When the bite settled on his tongue, a heavy day vanished from his mind: that day when his horse broke its leg, that day the frost claimed his potatoes, that day his youngest son fell ill and never awoke again.

But as that day was erased, whispers rippled through the village. Across the hills, a neighbour’s barn caught fire, a child went missing, and a widow’s grief grew heavier by the hour. Fate had shifted, not erased, but its weight carried by another.

Suspicion grew and word spread of the tree’s supposed power, and soon Aedan found himself caught in its impossible web. Each fruit could undo a hardship, a sickness, a tragedy. But every gift demanded a toll. True, paid not by him, but by someone, somewhere else.

He saved the sick lambs, mended broken fences, reversed the sickness that stalked his neighbours. Then, driven by desperation, he ate the fruit to reclaim the day his daughter died. Her laughter returned to him like the first thaw of spring, but somewhere far away, another child’s eyes dimmed, another mother wept.

The Fae King of Winter followed the matter through the reports of his court. Tales of a pale, silent figure whose curse was both hunger and confinement. His court, spun from ice and shadow, waited patiently for the outcome. The tree was only one among many instruments in the King’s long, seemingly cruel fascination with the village; a weaving of fate and sorrow, pruning mortal lives as a gardener prunes an orchard. He sought a cure for his own cursed existence, feeding on pain and loss to slake an eternal thirst.

One bitter night, when the snow lay thick and the village huddled close, a bard arrived, his cloak dusted with frost. By the hearth in the inn he spoke of orchards like Aedan’s, scattered across the world and across time, all tied to the Winter King’s shadowy reach. He told stories of families touched by the King’s gifts; of trees that bore fruit of joy and despair alike, forever binding mortals to fae bargains and bitter debts.

There was a hint that the families of these tales were borne of the same tree.

Aedan listened, heart sinking. He saw the truth writ in the glowing fruit: the power to erase pain was a double-edged blade, a spell of mercy twisted into a chain of misery.

Seeing little or no rhyme or reason, and determined now to end the cycle, Aedan climbed the orchard in the deep of night, an axe clenched tight in his frost-numbed hands. The silver leaves shimmered above him, whispering secrets in the cold breeze.

As he raised the axe to strike, a voice stopped him. It was low, smooth, and ancient as winter itself.

“You have pruned your days,” came a voice like wind threading through dead leaves.

From the tangled roots of the silver tree, the shape of a fox slinked forth. It was not the creature Aedan had once cradled in his arms, but something older, cleverer, wrong. Its fur shimmered like ash-dusted snow, its many eyes glinting with cold mischief. It rose on hind legs with a fluid motion too smooth to be human, bones creaking like frozen branches, a mockery of man and beast both.

This was Tatterleaf himself, envoy of the king. His long tail curled behind like a brush dipped in winter’s ink, and frost bloomed where its paws touched the earth.

“But now,” the pooka purred, licking its teeth with a tongue like silver thread, “I shall taste the harvest you’ve so carefully grown.”

The final fruit pulsed in the branches above, heavy with stolen days and unpaid debts. Aedan stared at the fruit, the last choice laid bare before him.

To eat it, and forget everything-his love, his loss, the sorrow that shaped him. Or to pass it on, condemning another to carry the weight of his past.

The orchard was silent, save for the cold breath of the wind and the soft murmur of the silver leaves.

Aedan’s hand trembled, the axe lowering as frost gathered in his veins. Around him, unseen watchers from the Winter court waited, silent, patient, eternal.

In that frozen moment, Aedan finally realized the cruel truth: mercy from the Winter King was never free. It was a weaving of sorrow and sacrifice, a thread in the endless tapestry of winter’s rule.

And so, beneath the orchard’s glowing branches, Aedan made his choice, binding himself forever to the fruit that forgets and to the price that must always be paid.

His breath formed mist in the freezing air as he stood beneath the orchard’s silver boughs, the last fruit glowing faintly above him like a captured star. Tatterleaf’s cold gaze bore down on him, sharp and unyielding, as if weighing the very fibres of his soul.

The air grew still then, the usual whispering of the orchard quieted, as if the world itself held its breath. The elder pooka watched from the shadows with mischievous eyes. He was neither friend nor foe, merely a witness to the delicate balance of the bargain.

Aedan felt the centuries of this ancient game pressing on him. He had tasted the fruit’s sweetness and felt its curse ripple through the lives of others. He had saved his daughter’s life, but at what cost? Somewhere, another child had disappeared into the cold. Somewhere else, a mother’s heart had broken.

The ache in his chest was heavier than any winter chill.

“The king would know your answer,” Tatterleft intoned, voice like cracking ice.

Aedan’s gaze drifted upward to the final fruit, its glow pulsing with the weight of all stolen days and hidden sorrows. He imagined biting into its flesh, washing away all memory of pain and loss. The price of peace, if only fleeting.

But in that instant, a flicker of warmth stirred deep inside him. The memories of his daughter’s laughter, the feel of her small hand in his, the stories he had told her by the fireside—all the love and grief intertwined—could he truly let it all vanish?

He lowered the axe. The orchard’s light dimmed, shadows deepening as frost crept along the ground like silent fingers.

“I cannot,” Aedan said quietly. “To forget is to lose the very thing worth living for.”

Tatterleaf’s expression was unreadable, a mask carved from ice and sorrow. Yet beneath it, Aedan sensed something ancient and weary; the faintest trace of longing for something lost, a glimmer of hope.

“Very well,” he replied. “The fruit remains. But your refusal binds you in a new way.”

From the frost around them, ethereal chains formed. Woven from silver leaves and whispered promises, binding Aedan’s fate to the orchard, to the winter, and to the endless cycle of healing and loss.

“You shall carry the burden of the orchard’s fruit,” the pooka decreed. “Heal your village, but bear its cost alone. The fruit’s gift will not forget you, nor will you forget its price.”

Tatterleaf stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with sly approval. “A mercy, of sorts,” he murmured. “For the Winter King always collects his due.”

In the years that followed, Aedan became both guardian and prisoner of the orchard. He tended the trees with reverent hands, offering fruit to the sick and sorrowful, each gift a bittersweet salvation. The village of Mallow flourished, shielded from the worst ravages of fate, but Aedan’s heart grew heavy with the knowledge that each blessing rippled outward, unseen, shaping lives far beyond his reach.

At night, beneath the silver leaves, he would dream of distant places; of children who vanished, of barns that burned, of hearts broken in shadow. He whispered apologies to the cold stars, his voice carried away on the wind.

The Winter King watched still, hearing reports and sometimes bearing witness in person, a reminder that even mercy from the fae came bound in frost and shadow.

And so, the orchard remained, glowing softly in the cold dark, a place where memory and forgetfulness tangled like the silver branches, and where the fruit that forgot carried the weight of all who dared to taste its magic.

---

Eagle Eyes, fiction
by Sly Duck

You know that question about what kind of animal would you want to be reincarnated as? Well, I don’t believe in reincarnation, you understand, but just to entertain the idea, I think I’d like to be an eagle.

Imagine soaring hundreds of feet above the ground at speeds of over 100 mph. Wow! That would be fantastic.

Then, there is their extraordinary eyesight. An eagle can identify an object 80 feet away that a human can only see from 20 feet away. This is extremely helpful when hunting. They can also detect movement and have better color vision including ultraviolet sensitivity. This ability makes it possible to detect the slightest movement of prey in grass and follow the trail it leaves. I’m a bit jealous. My own eyes have never worked 100% and now I have lost all but the ability to see if it is day or night.

Like I said, I don’t believe in reincarnation, but something very unexpected happened to me recently. I woke up one morning to find myself in the body of an eagle. After I got over the shock, I started to have fun with my new ability to fly and see. I flew over a stream and caught the glint of a fish scale. Swiftly, I swooped down and grabbed it with my talons. Woo-hoo! That was fun. Back at my nest I had a lovely dinner. It was a trout, I think. With my gizzard full, and a little tired from my day’s adventure, I settled down in my nest and dozed off.

When I woke, I was back in my old body staring up at the ceiling. I could see tiny bumps, hairline cracks, and irregularities in the textured paint. I got up. Ugh, I could see every speck of debris and fiber in the carpet.

I had lost the power of flight, but, at least for now, I had retained most of my eagle vision. Since my eyes are in front instead of on the side, I only had a visual field of 180 degrees instead of 340.

Going out into the front yard. I could see every blade of grass. There were some little holes with tiny turtle eyes peering up at me. I knew turtles from the park behind my house often laid their eggs in my yard. I guess these were newly hatched and trying to get out of the nest.

To my left, cars were whizzing by on the street. I detected some movement in the grass on the median. I thought it must be a trail of ants carrying food back to their colony.

Across the street, I saw a newspaper leaning against my neighbor’s front door. According to the headline, the president had made a special speech honoring the service and sacrifice of veterans who have fought to preserve our freedoms and way of life.

To my right, one of my neighbors was using her cell phone. If she would just tilt it up a little…

“I don’t care what…” Oops, she noticed me and turned around. She gave a little wave, and went into the house. Darn.

This was a real treat for me. I wondered how long it was going to last.

I walked around to the stream behind my house, I noticed little trails in the yards I passed. This was amazing, I never knew there was so much activity around here. From the bank of the stream, I watched the fish swim along. There was one missing some scales. I wondered what happened to it, remembering the trout I caught as an eagle.

Hearing a series of chirps, I turned and saw a mother bird feeding her young. The little birds were just starting to show lines of color on their bodies that would become feathers. Looking down the line of trees, I saw an amazing variety of colors in the leaves, there was another bird feeding her young, and a squirrel running along a branch.

My talking watch announced the time notifying me that I needed to start getting ready for my caregiver’s arrival. Going back around to my front yard, I went back inside.

As I prepared lunch, I decided not to tell my caregiver about my greatly improved vision. It might not last. No point in confusing matters.

Our ride to the post office was overwhelming. Pebbles and tiny cracks littered the road. Looking straight ahead, I could see the signal light on the crossroad that is at least a mile away. I was glad I wasn’t driving, there was so much detail. I closed my eyes to block out the flood of information. As time went by, this new eagle vision wasn’t as much fun as it had been at first.

Back home, we started going through the mail. I could see each strand of fiber in the paper and the tiny dots that make up each letter. I held each envelope up as usual for her to tell me who it was from so I could sort them into the order I wanted to read them. I almost gave my secret away a couple of times, but my caregiver is amazed at what I can do, so I don’t think she suspected my improved vision.

I wondered how long this was going to last. It was great to be able to see again, but I didn’t really need or want to see like an eagle. If it went away, would I at least have normal vision going forward?

It’s been a month, and I’m still experiencing extraordinary sight.

On the way to my last doctor’s appointment, I was looking down the road and noticed the signal light where we usually turn was blinking red. I realized the delay getting through that light would make me late for my appointment. So I suggested we take the traffic circle this time. She was surprised. I usually preferred the other route because it is two miles shorter, but she went ahead and took the next exit.

On the way home, she commented that it was good we took the other route because the light at the intersection on the route we usually take was blinking. “I guess you must have had a premonition.”

I smiled to myself.

Something like that, I thought.

I am beginning to adjust to all the extra information and learning to block out what is unimportant. There is a Department of Public Safety located just down the street from me. I think I’ll see about renewing my driver’s license, and doing some of those things I haven’t been able to do for a really long time as soon as I’m sure this is going to last.

Author’s note: Eagle eyes Gather large amounts of light, and produce exceptionally detailed images. Visual acuity is estimated to be between 20/4 and 20/5. For example, an eagle would be able to see something two miles away as clearly as a human with normal vision could see at one-half mile.

Bio: Cleora Boyd (AKA Sly Duck) grew up on a small farm in the panhandle of Texas. In 1978, she was living in Lubbock, Texas and working as an accountant when she learned she has retinitis Pigmentosa. She went back to school to get a degree in Math and computer science, and worked for a major Pharmaceutical in Fort Worth, Texas until she retired in 2006. She joined a writing group in 2016 and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her cockatiel Dusty.

---

Part II. Looking Back

Traveling to the Past, creative nonfiction, nonfiction First Place
by Linda Wright

If I could travel to the past for ten minutes at a time, my first stop would be Hingham, Massachusetts, on November 4, 1895. It is the day my grandmother, Carrie Leavitt, marries Martin Revardy Wright. I arrive as Carrie is eating her breakfast.

I open the door to the rooming house and follow the sound of clinking plates and spoons. I walk through the front hall towards the aroma of coffee and simmering oatmeal. When I enter the kitchen, Carrie is folding a napkin across her lap. Looking up from buttering her toast, she has no idea that a granddaughter from the future has come to sit beside her this morning.

Her hair is pulled back tightly over her ears and formed in a bun at the back of her neck. She is twenty-six, but she looks younger.

“You seem nervous,” I say as I sit in a chair.

She laughs.

“Do I?”

I look at her quizzically, hoping to encourage her to tell me more.

“I’m getting married today. Martin is a wonderful man and I love him,” she says, “but it was hard to tell my students goodbye. You know, they don’t allow married women to teach school. See that book of poetry on the table? The children gave me that book as a farewell present. I loved reading poems to them. I will miss those dear, dear children.”

I nod. Years later my father would be reading poems to me. I realize my love of poetry may be one of the gifts I inherited from my grandmother. It is hard not to say thank you, but that would only be confusing to her.

As she finishes eating, she picks up her plate, washes it at the sink, and says “Goodbye, it’s been nice talking with you. I won’t be back here tonight.” She blushes and I imagine she is thinking about her wedding night.

Leaving the kitchen, I walk through the parlor and glance at the dress form holding a heavy Victorian wedding gown in the corner. I have seen an old photo of her wearing that dress with puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves. Just as I imagined, it is a deep burgundy red.

I want at least one more trip back in time with this grandmother I never knew. I would direct the time machine to take me to Fitchburg, Massachusetts in the summer of 1920 when Carrie is fifty-one. I stand outside my grandparents’ house, where I can see the back door. The house is close to the railroad tracks. I see a man with a limp and a glazed stare walking towards the house. He knocks and Carrie opens the door. She nods and in a few minutes comes outside, handing him a plate of food. He takes the plate and sits under a nearby tree.

Then, I approach Carrie. “How kind of you,” I say to her. “Not everyone would be so generous.”

She shrugs, “So many men who came back from the war in Germany cannot seem to settle down. People call them hobos. Many drift from town to town, hopping freight trains in search of work. It’s sad to see,” she says. “He offered to help if I had a job to do, but there is no need.”

I nod and wait for her to continue.

“My husband can fix almost anything. He has had to take many different jobs since automobiles replaced horses. Martin used to care for the town doctor’s stable.” A loud train whistle interrupts her. “He worries though. We have a lot of medical bills to pay. My daughter, Marion, died a few months ago. She had been sick for some time. So many of my seven children have died,” she sighs. Then her voice lightens, “But I still have two little boys at home.” She smiles, then covers a cough with her apron.

As I say goodbye, I know something she may not. She already has tuberculosis.

For my next trip back in time I would go to Fitchburg, two years later on August 10th of 1922. This time I want to see Martin, my paternal grandfather. I want to know what is in his heart.

I knock on the back door and wait for Martin to answer.

When he opens the door I say, “Does your wife have some sugar I might borrow?”

Martin looks tired. He wipes sweat off his brow and his musky body odor smells oddly familiar. He smells like my father after he has been working in our garden on a hot July day. Two little boys, one about ten and the other about twelve peek around a corner and then disappear into another room.

“My wife died last month, Ma’am, and I’m trying to pack up the boys to go to their sister’s place. Come in though, and I’ll see if there’s any extra sugar in the kitchen.”

“I’m so sorry to hear of your wife’s death,” I say. Suddenly I feel the grief of never having met Carrie while she was alive and real tears come to my eyes. I clear my throat and regain my composure.

As I follow him into the kitchen Martin continues, “My daughter Elsie just got married last winter. She lives in Nova Scotia now with her husband, Fred. It will be good to see her again. We have a lot of family there. I grew up there myself. The boys will be safe and well cared for.”

Martin puts a hefty amount of sugar in a paper bag and hands it to me. I notice his rugged callused hands as I reach for the bag.

“Thank you,” I say “That’s more than I need.”

“I don’t cook much,” he says, “my boys have learned survival cooking. We eat soup from a can and cook only simple things.”

My curiosity about Martin is no less than it was about Carrie. I would like to have brief opportunities to observe this grandfather, at several different periods in his life. Returning in 1929. I know that after Elsie’s husband died she and her younger brothers came back to live with Martin.

I sit on the bus with Martin, from Fitchburg to the Massachusetts State Sanatorium in Rutland where Elsie was hospitalized with tuberculosis.

When I get off the bus, I walk a few steps behind Martin and his youngest son, Horace. We climb the hill to the Sanatorium. Martin is carrying a full laundry bag and he is intently listening to his son. Horace is explaining the books he has been reading. He’d like to go to college like his older sister, Blanch. She graduated from Bates College in Maine. Martin says he is proud of her. Then he tells Horace he is also proud of him. I can hear the regret in Martin’s tone of voice when he says “We’ll see,” to his son.

I watch a barn swallow dip and sway as it chases flies in the air and think about my father’s unfulfilled dreams. The year he graduated from high school was the year the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. There would be no money for him to continue his education.

If I could time travel to meet this grandfather, who died five years before I was born, I would want to give him a hug. But, he doesn’t know me and he never will.

I want to encounter my Aunt Elsie. I am tempted to sit in the silent movie theater where Elsie played the piano. She never learned to read music. I’d like to hear her improvise the dramatic music to represent the action on the screen.

Instead, I choose to meet Elsie as a young woman working in one of the textile mills. I travel to September 1921 and become a fellow mill worker. The rhythmic clatter of the machines makes it hard for us to talk while we work. Elsie operates a pantograph that duplicates the pattern for each machine to cut the cloth. It’s hot and dusty, but at least we get a few weeks off in the steamiest part of the summer.

As we leave together at the end of the work day to walk home, I ask about her summer vacation.

“I had a wonderful time seeing my old friends and family. And I met a man. I think I’m in love,” Elsie gushes. “His name is Fred. He fought in the war in Germany. He was born in the States, but now he has purchased property in Nova Scotia. Fred is fixing up a house in town. He also owned land in the woods near a lake where he hoped to construct a cottage. He has been sending me letters ever since I got back home. One letter was written on thin split sheets of birch bark. He even made the envelope out of birch bark. It is so delicate! Yesterday he sent me a fur stole, made from a fox he had trapped, skinned and tanned. He’s offered to come help my parents move into their new house in December. Maybe you will meet him then at one of the holiday parties.”

When Elsie stops exclaiming long enough I say, “That’s wonderful. If he proposes, we could have the wedding at my house if you want.”

Elsie married in early January of 1922 in the home of a friend. The following summer she and Fred took in her two young brothers. Tragically, Fred died less than a year later when a strangulated hernia ruptured. Elsie and the boys would then return to Massachusetts to live with Martin again.

As far as I know, it was only a few years later when Elsie realized that she, like her mother before her, had tuberculosis.

The next time travel journey I would make is to see Elsie in April of 1933. Wearing a nurse’s uniform and cap, I walk into the day room of the Massachusetts State Sanatorium. It smells like soap and antiseptic. I wish it wasn’t so cold outside and I could open the windows.

Elsie is talking to another patient there. They are both grinning.

“What are you two so happy about?” I ask.

“We are getting out of here,” Elsie responds. “My father has done my laundry for the last time. He has enough on his hands and I am feeling so much better.”

“Yes,” says her friend. “We both are well enough to travel, so we have signed our release forms and tomorrow we take the train to Arizona.”

“Are you sure you are ready to leave?” I say, with hesitation.

“They say the dry air there makes it easier to breathe. The desert is supposed to be lovely.” Elsie sighs, “I know I probably don’t have many years left to live, and I want to enjoy the time I have. I want to explore!”

Her friend nods enthusiastically. I can’t help but smile. My father remembered his sister’s life ended gasping for air, but I treasured the polished slice of petrified wood from Arizona that Elsie sent him. I picture her walking the trails of the National Park. I will always think of this aunt as full of life. I like to believe I share some of her resilience and spirit of adventure.

On September 1, 1938, Elsies remains were shipped by train back to Martin, who took them to be buried beside her beloved Fred in Clementsvale, Nova Scotia.

The time machine brings me home, but I find myself looking at old photographs differently. I no longer see strangers in stiff Victorian clothes or faded snapshots. I see Carrie buttering her toast, Martin pressing a paper bag of sugar into my hands, and Elsie laughing about the desert she longs to explore. They have become people instead of portraits. Ten minutes was never enough, but perhaps it was all I needed.

Bio: Linda Wright is a member of Behind Our Eyes, Tallahassee Writers Association, and Women Writing for Change. She was a librarian for thirty years until her early retirement in 2002 after experiencing a hemorrhagic stroke. A woman with a rare bleeding disorder, she is also a cancer survivor and liver transplant recipient. Her memoir, My Turn: When Caregiving Roles Reverse, was published by Graywood Press in 2017. Among other things, Linda is a Yankee with Canadian roots who now lives in Florida with her spouse, Robin and a curious cat they call Mist or Mystify.

---

Remembering Anne, memoir
by Kate Chamberlin

Before I share my memories of Anne Hotchkiss, there are two people I’d like to acknowledge.

Anne’s daughter Diane. As a teenager, you gave your mother a lot of angst, yet you matured into a kind and compassionate woman. When your mother needed you, you were there for her. Well done good and faithful daughter.

Then there is her grandson Joshua. Anne brought him to meet me when he was ten years old. Well, actually she brought him to swim in our pool, but we had a great chat about his dream to be an entomologist. When the young man emerged from His chrysalis, his talent as a graphic artist took flight.

Last week, his talent As a writer burst forth. Josh crafted the fantastic tribute to his grandmother for the newspapers. Well done Sunshine!

He highlighted Anne’s personality traits of steady commitment to faith, service, compassion, accountability, personal growth, and sisterhood.

Dave and I first met Anne and Stu When they moved into the beautiful, though drafty cobblestone home in Walworth. They started coming to the Zion Episcopal Church in Palmyra, where we’d been attending for many years.

We clicked and became a foursome. We Enjoyed breaking bread in each other’s homes, dining out for anniversaries, birthdays and just to be with each other.

When you spend that much time with people, you learn about them.

Did you know that when Anne was in the Girl Scouts, she trained to be an airplane spotter early in WWII?

Anne was dyslexic but earned a Psychology degree from St. Lawrence, several other degrees, and just for the heck of it when she was an older adult, a Master’s Degree from Nazareth College?

She joined the Young Republicans Club to worked to get General Eisenhower elected?

I’d been a long-time member of the Daughters of the American Revolution when Anne joined in 1999. It Intensified her genealogy research, as she Held many elected offices and appointed positions.

The group would hold their business meeting in the morning, share a brown bag lunch, and stay for the afternoon’s program. If there wasn’t a program, Anne and I would head for a restaurant for lunch.

Our favorite was the old Biker Bar!

We worked on many church projects together. We initiated the church archives in 2001.

She was part of a community sewing circle and became one of the church’s clown creators mission.

When our daughter kicked up her rebellious heels, Anne we noticed other parents having similar issues with their teens, Anne and Stu said they’d been there, why don’t we organize a parents’ support group, so we did and ran with it for about three years.

Our favorite activity was to attend the 8 o’clock Mass in the chapel,
then head to the Yellow Mills Restaurant for brunch. Along with the four of us, there were usually four or six others, including an occasional substitute priest, other clergy, and once a Bishop.

When the Episcopal Church turned left the Hotchkisses wanted to go straight, so, they started attending Holy Cross Anglican Church. We soon joined them in the small Webster Church on Bacchus Road.

Anne immediately volunteered me to be the secretary of the Vestry, which I enjoyed doing for many years. During that time, I’d written a three year curriculum for the Sunday School and promptly volunteered Anne to match up a Bible video with each of my lesson plans. Of course, after each work session, we headed to a restaurant to solve the woes of the world.

I shall Miss my friend But I wouldn’t deny her the blessing of Being in the mansion Our Lord has prepared for her, And to once again room with her Beloved husband, Stu.

I sure Hope the mansion has a 5-star restaurant!

Good-bye, my friend. I love you.
Anne Genevieve (Symonds) Hotchkiss
b.September 21, 1929 – d.May 31, 2026

Bio: Kathryn G. (Kate) Chamberlin, B.S., M.A., and her husband have lived and raised three children plus two grandchildren atop the drumlin in Walworth, NY, since 1972.

With the assistance of computer screen reader software, this former Elementary teacher, developed a Study Buddy Tutoring Service, presented her Feely Cans and Sniffy Jars Workshop, became the published author of four children’s books, edited a literary anthology featuring 65 writers with disabilities, edited the anthology for the Wayne Writers Guild, and is a free-lance writer.

As empty nesters, Kate and her husband enjoy having lunch out, country walks, and mall cruising or walking on their side-by-side treadmills during inclement weather.

---

Radio Lament, poetry
by Leonard Tuchyner

The walnut radio stood in the hall.
Its cyclopean eye was four feet high.
I studied its yellowish-dialed orb,
waiting to hear those beloved words,
as I did every day. “It’s a bird.
“It’s a plane. No, it’s Superman.
The mantra poured from brown shrouded speakers
like cherry soda on a child’s parched lips.
I stood transfixed by my old loyal friend,
who tickled my world of imagination—
a mind not long bound to limitation.
If Superman could fly, then so might I.

I did fly on lilting, clear, sweet sounds of Johnny Mathis,
wafting through speakers at Boca Ciega High School—
drank in revivifying coffee of, “Wake Up Little Suzy,”
And melted to dulcet, crying tones of Connie Frances.

My tiny radio, in college days, taught me about
Little Green Apples in Minneapolis,
and Bobby Goldsboro foretold of loved ones lost with “Honey.”
What happened? How did you change?
Why did you change?
Your soul-felt, heart-rending, gay voice
disappeared into a sea of cacophony and banal ads,
screamed by feral, grasping ad men,
whose crazed, high-pitched rantings
competed with nails-on-blackboard for cringe value.

Sometimes I search the radio waves
for a hint of my old-sweet-home
that you used to be for me.
If I find you, you are drowned out by marauding screeches,
until I give up in frustration, visualizing the device
In pieces on the floor, or flying through the door.

Have the young ones been born without a gene
which understands that not all sounds are music,
that they deserve better than to listen to commercial hype?
That seeks to deafen, desensitize and sell them crap?

Or am I just getting too old to keep up?

Bio: Leonard Tuchyner has observed the world going through twists and turns for the last 85 years. His over 60 years of counseling work have enhanced his writing and understanding of human nature. His own struggles with increasing blindness, and a major stroke at the age of 85, from which he is recovering, have increased his compassion and understanding.

He lives with his wife and cat, and enjoys gardening, and writing poetry and prose. He has two daughters, two sons, and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.

He has four published books: two novels, one book of poetry, and a book of poetry and short stories.

---

Different Star Views, Contrapuntal poetry
by Carol Farnsworth

Note: this is a Contrapuntal poem. It can be read horizontally and vertically for three different poems.

Golden glow.                              Slaves sang folk songs.

Bright north light                       Directing to freedom

Polaris points north.                  Looking to the stars,

Little Dipper points.                   Following the drinking gourd.

Seven stars remembered.         Promised freedom.

For me, now darken.                  traveling by night.

Gazing to the sky.                       Pursuing emancipation.

---

I Held My Breath, fiction
by Bill Tope

We had been crowded into a long, plain low-ceilinged room the size of a small pastoral church with cement walls and floor. The soldiers confiscated all of our clothes, shoes, and what jewelry and personal effects that had remained with us. Most of it had long ago been bartered away for food, clean water, or other privileges scarce in the Warsaw ghetto from which we had all come.

We were completely naked: the men, women, even the little children. Our heads had been shaved. A gauche rumor had it that the Huns stuffed their pillows and mattresses with our hair. The room was entirely vacant, but for the stark human bodies; our pale white flesh was the color of a fish’s belly, and we were stuffed into the room like oysters into a turkey. Our bodies smelled from perspiration and the filth that had accumulated on the trip by train from the Polish capital, as well as from the mental stress of our imminent deaths. We were told, in various languages, German, Polish, and Yiddish that before we could get our uniforms and be fed and given accommodations, we must undergo delousing. Some of us, our confidence vested in the authority of our captors, took this statement at face value.

We had all been shipped to the deathcamp (todeslager) like cattle to the slaughter, in chained box cars, with no food or water. With scarcely enough room to breathe. Once or twice a plane flying overhead had strafed the train with machinegun fire. Perhaps our own brave pilots, flying air raids for the allies.

There were amongst us no youths or middle aged men and women; they had all been absorbed prior to departure from the ghetto into the vast slave labor network the Huns operated. Only the crippled, the sick, the feeble, and the old like myself were here, save for the very young, who weren’t hardy enough for slave labor. Curiously, in the rare case of identical twins, they were taken elsewhere as well. We didn’t know what became of them.

We were in Treblinka. It was June, 1943, and the rumor was that the camp would be closed soon. I had been there a matter of only a few days. My wife hadn’t been as lucky as I. She died of starvation and medical neglect at the ghetto in Warsaw shortly before we were harvested and shipped to Treblinka. This was following the uprising, when the pace of everything became greatly accelerated. We were told we were being transported “East for resettlement.” Perhaps after all, Rachela had been the lucky one.

Prior to departure, we were fed jam and bread—for some of us our first meal in days—and encouraged to pack bags. Our luggage was then seized by the Germans before the trains even departed the station. We had no room to lie or sit or even turn around. We were like the kippers that were packed in oil or mustard, that the inmates in labor camps—the Arbeitslager—got from the Red Cross. At Treblinka, we never received our kippers.

As we came into the “train station” at the camp, most prisoners didn’t recognize the station for the mock-up that it was. Fake ticket windows, faux baggage carts, and even a clock with painted-on numbers greeted an unassuming group of doomed prisoners. Most prisoners were executed immediately upon arrival, but for some reason, our fate was delayed for almost a week. Even killing machines require maintenance, I suppose.

There were nothing but rumors flying throughout the compound; I heard it whispered that the German women made lamp shades with our skin. Other gossip said that grisly artifacts were constructed by tradesmen from our denuded bones. Some of the old men stared with concern up at an aperture in the ceiling, about a foot and a half over our heads. That, they said, was where the Germans would deposit the Zyklon B, the poison they would gas us with. Where they got their information, again, I never learned.

The Commandant, addressing us prisoners upon our arrival only days before, had bragged that superior German industry had created many wonderful things. This was perhaps the example he had in mind when he said that. He had seemed very proud. One of the relatively younger of the men with us had been a helper, removing the bodies from the chamber after the gas had dissipated. Even in this group, every prisoner would be murdered and replaced with new arrivals every few weeks, with the exception of specific individuals, usually from the Hofjuden. They were kept alive because of their technical expertise, which was considered essential to running the camp. In fact, one’s destiny was often denoted by the color of a striped band on their uniform—red given to short term workers in the killing and sorting areas, blue to the unloading group, and yellow to the skilled workers like electricians or engineers.

This man, who said his name was Carl, said he had worn a red stripe; his job had been to spring into action after everyone was dead. He told us all about how the death procedures worked. The poison-prussic acid—he said, worked fast. There would be a rattling over our heads, in the chute that the poison was fed into. Someone, he said with a grotesque grin, always tried to keep the pellet from descending. But fall it always did. For his labors he had received an extra crust of Brot, and his life.

We waited. And waited. Suddenly there was a loud clattering overhead, in the chute. The pellet of Zyklon B was descending. A tall man, as if acting a part in a play, attempted to prevent the pellet from falling, where it would crack open and then dissipate in a cloud of murderous vapor. His hand slipped. Suddenly, a large white pellet crashed to the floor, burst open and a deadly diaphanous mist rose up. Someone spontaneously giggled. A woman cried out. The lethal “showers” had begun.

I held my breath.

“I held my breath” was previously published as a poem in Children, Churches and Daddies

BIO: Bil Tope is a retired public assistance caseworker, construction laborer, line cook at the Hilton hotel and a one-time nude model for university art classes.

Tope has diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, Tourette’s Syndrome, and Misophonia.

He has been published often. He lives in the American Midwest with his mean little cat Baby.

---

A Day in the Life of Ellie Manetti, fiction
by Elizabeth Fiorite

I can’t believe how things can get out of control. I never meant for this to get so involved, I mean, with my mom and the police and all.

Okay, okay, I’ll start from the beginning, if I can. It’s not easy, being ten-years-old, trying to help my mother and keeping my part of our agreement, which is to get good grades, help with the housework, and stay out of trouble. Her part is to make money and take care of the bills, like rent and food and car payments, stuff like that.

Mom teaches music at the junior high and gives piano lessons in our living room after school and on Saturdays. Usually, this works out okay; Mom and me have been a team for as long as I can remember. My Mom and Dad got divorced shortly after I was born, so I never got to know him. We never hear from him, and if Mom knows where he is or anything about him, she’s keeping it a big secret. Sometimes I think about him and wonder if he ever thinks about me. I figure you can’t miss what you don’t know, and I just hope Mom doesn’t get any ideas about my needing a father or anything like that. We’re doing okay the way we are, or at least, the way we were.

None of this would have happened if Freddie Blubber Buns wasn’t such a jerk. His real name is Frederick Randolph Butterfield, but only the teachers call him that. Freddie is fat, wears glasses, has a mop of brown curly hair that always needs combing, and he’s allergic to dogs. I know that because when he comes over on Saturday mornings for his piano lesson, I have to be sure to keep my dog Tipsy in the back yard so Mr. Freddie won’t start wheezing and sneezing. This suits me fine,
because I can usually get the kitchen cleaned up and have time to take Tipsy across the alley with me to go see my best friend, Betsy Ann Capelli.

The teachers like Freddie because he is so proper. When he makes a mistake in school, he says,” Oh, yes, Mrs. Phillips, I meant to say that.” Or “Oh, yes, Sister Joanna, I had thought about that first.” Why couldn’t he just be embarrassed or pout like the rest of us? And no matter what the subject is, his mother had already told him about this, or his father had been there, or he had read about that in his encyclopedia just the other day.

Well, to get on with my story. Freddie doesn’t have too many friends, not because he’s fat and wears glasses. Millie Wilkerson is kind of chubby and wears glasses, and she is one of the most popular kids in our class. Freddy just acts like he knows everything and you don’t. He is kind of smart, but what he can really do is play the piano. my mom has been his teacher for five years. She’s been my teacher, too, and I’m at least two books behind Freddie.

I told my Mom I wanted to play drums, but she laid it out for me real clear.

“I spent five hundred dollars for this second hand piano, so you are learning piano first. If you keep up with your lessons, maybe you can take drums when you get to junior high.”

On some things, I can wear Mom down, but she’s hanging tough on this one.

Well, last Saturday, Betsy and me got to thinking about different things we could do, just for fun, you know. Mom’s big piano recital was coming up in two weeks. It was going to be held in the high school auditorium, and we all knew that Freddie would win the first prize. I couldn’t tell you for sure if the idea came more from Betsy or from me, but I know who my mom blames. If Freddie got to sneezing’ and wheezing’ in the middle of his piece, now, that would be something worth seeing. We decided to see how much dog hair would be needed, how we could hide it near the piano; you know, it would be like a science experiment. I knew Mom would ground me until my wedding day if I accidently on purpose ran through the front room with Tipsy, where he might shake himself if he had gotten a little wet, say, under the sprinkler.

“We can’t do anything obvious,” I told Betsy as I combed Tipsy and put his hair in a plastic bread wrapper I had saved from the garbage can on my way over to Betsy’s.

“Let’s get over to my house before Freddie gets there for his lesson” I said. “If this works at home, maybe we can figure out how to do it at the recital. We can hide some of this hair where Mom won’t notice.” Well, that’s what we did. We put Tipsy’s hair on the inside of the lamp shade near the piano; we spread it on the rug under the piano bench, and just made it into the kitchen as Mom came downstairs in time to open the front door for Freddie. We heard Freddie come in and thump down on the bench and start shuffling through his music. The sneezing started almost immediately. My Mom must have been talking to Freddie’s mother at the front door. We opened the kitchen door just a little, and saw Freddie sneeze and his music flew to the floor. Betsy was trying so hard not to laugh out loud, she was almost choking.

“Freddie,” I heard my mom say, and I closed the door quietly. Tears were running down Betsy’s face, and I took in a big breath, and waited to hear Freddie start playing. Nothing. We looked at each other and stopped laughing. We could hear Freddie coughing, and Mom’s voice seemed to be farther away.

Why was it so quiet?

“Maybe he died,” Betsy whispered.

Our arms got tangled as we pushed through the door and fell into the dining room. I thought my mom would yell at me when she heard us, but there was no one in the house. I ran to the front porch in time to see the Butterfields’ car zoom down the street, with Mom driving.

“Where are they going? Why is your mother driving Blubber Buns’ car?” Betsy cried. “Do you think Freddie died? We’ve killed him!”

Mom always said that she thought Betsy was a little high strung.

“Calm down, Betsy,” I told her. “Let’s figure this out scientifically. They wouldn’t take Freddie dead in the car, would they? Why was my mom driving?”

I sat down on the top step of the porch. Betsy was getting riled. “You know how nervous Freddie’s mother gets. I bet he’s nearly dead, Ellie! We’ve committed murder!” Betsy was waving her arms and jumping around so much, it was hard for me to think. Mom would not have gone off without telling me when she was coming back, but she did think I was at Betsy’s. If this was a big emergency, though, she wouldn’t have time to tell me.

“We’ll go to jail for the rest of our lives!” Betsy was out of control and, okay, I have to admit that I was getting pretty nervous myself. I stood up and said, “Okay, I’ll call the police. We’ll turn ourselves in.”

I went into the house and Betsy followed me, crying the whole time.

We might get the electric chair,” she wailed. “And this is the biggest sin of all!”

I told Betsy, “But if we turn ourselves in, we may get cremency.”

“What’s cremency?” Betsy’s eyes got really wide.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “We may get to come home on holidays.”

I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. I dialed the number for the police department and squeezed my eyes shut as I told the police woman on the other end, “My name is Eleanor Rose Manetti and I live at 1223 Pine Cone Street and I have murdered Freddie Butterfield aided and abetted by Betsy Capelli.” Then I hung up and took Betsy by the hand and went out to the front steps to wait for the police to come for us. Betsy wanted to run home, but I told her it was better not to leave the scene of the crime.

“You know, if we did commit murder, it wasn’t on purpose.“

I started thinking of all the mean things I had said about Freddie.

“He really was smart, and my mom says he could be a professional piano player.”

“Not if he’s dead, he can’t!” whined Betsy.

The police came about the same time Mom drove up with Mrs. Butterfield and Freddie. I must have smiled when I saw Freddie, because he started to stick out his tongue at me like he always does, and then pulled it back in.

I started talking to the policeman as he walked toward the house. I recognized him as Officer Friendly, who came to school every year and showed us an old movie on bicycle safety. “I’m sorry, I, we made a mistake.” I blurted. “We thought we did something bad, but we didn’t, really.”

Betsy was no help whatsoever. She looked at Officer Friendly and then at Freddie and began crying all over again.

My Mom gave me that “What now?” look and waited for my explanation. I don’t remember exactly what I Said, trying to explain it as a science experiment.

Betsy was sobbing, “Are you going to tell my mother? We didn’t mean to commit murder.”

Officer Friendly figured out that there was no murder, and warned Betsy and me about making frivolous calls to the police when they had real crimes to worry about.

It seems that Freddie didn’t have any allergy attack, at least not one to kill him. He had come For his lesson, but Mrs. Butterfield had asked Mom to come with her to the printers to drop off the programs for the recital, since Mrs. Butterfield wasn’t sure where to go, so Mom offered to drive.

Mom made me apologize to Freddie and Mrs. Butterfield and the police. It was a dumb thing to do, and Betsy and me would have really felt bad if anything had happened to Freddie.

Don’t get me wrong, now. He’s still a nerd, but he doesn’t get on my nerves like he used to. Mom told me that I should try to understand people who get on my nerves. She told me that Freddie had to spend a lot of time indoors because of his allergies, and that was why he read so many books, and seemed not to have many friends. She said that maybe I could talk to him and see him as a boy who wanted to be friends, but maybe didn’t know how to talk to someone his own age. I figure I’ll call him up and ask him how he likes bugs. I mean, they’re dead and in plastic envelopes. Sometime when he comes for his piano lesson, I can show him some of the prettier ones.

Oh, yes, he did win first prize in the piano contest, and I got another ribbon for effort and improvement. Now that school’s back in session, Mom and me are on our regular schedule. I just might continue with the piano, though. My Mom is a good teacher and I still have time to think about the drums.

Bio: Elizabeth Fiorite has been a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin for over seventy years. She served as teacher and principal in Catholic elementary schools in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Alabama until a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa prompted a change in career plans. After completing courses at ILAB (Independent Living for Adult Blind) in Jacksonville, Florida, she was hired as a Social Services Counselor, a position she held for the next twenty years. She recently moved to Westchester, Illinois, where she lives with other semi-retired Dominican Sisters.

---

The Glowing Nun, memoir
by Steve Adams

While in London, I paid for accommodation by acquiring work as a kitchen hand in the Dover Castle hostel. Along with that, I sometimes took another part-time job participating in identification parades at the local police station for five quid a line up.

On my first day, I walked to the police station around the corner from the Dover. I was instructed to go to the gate in the alley round the back and ring the bell. I made my way down the empty alley to the gate, where I saw a white button and a camera lens built into the wall above it. I pressed the button, and a voice came out of the speaker by the camera, “Hello?”

I replied, “Hi, I’m here for the lineup.”

After five-seconds of silence, the electric gate clicked open, and I walked through to find a lady at a counter who directed me into a small room where there were two coppers and a desk with a chair on either side. A one-way mirror took up most of one wall. There were six blokes about my age, twenty-six.

We were told to line up side by side and face the glass, a couple of metres or so in front of us. A one-way mirror showed us our reflection, and on the other side, there was a clear window for people to look through. It was a serious event, so we had to keep straight faced without moving our eyes and stare at ourselves in the reflection. While on the opposite side of the glass, someone was watching, trying to identify the suspect among us.

After about five minutes, a policeman came into the room and paid us five pounds each, and we left. This was when we’d come to know who the suspect was. As everyone else was leaving, a policeman would come to talk with him before he was led away. That was if he hadn’t been identified, but if he was picked, a lawyer would come in and sit with him at the desk.

These line ups were too few to make a career of. I just did them as a bit of a hobby and to pick up a little extra cash.

One night, five of us Mo, Dave, Dago, Lee, and I were having a session in the Dover’s upstairs corridor when we ran out of drinks. Since we were still in the mood for a party, I came up with an idea. Having the keys to the kitchen, I also had access to the Dumb Waiter, which was raised and lowered between the kitchen and pub by rope, as the orders and meals were transferred between the two floors. I thought if I could squeeze into the box the boys could lower me down to the pub level where I could grab a bottle, and they’d pull me up again.

After a bit of pushing and shoving, they squeezed me in, but just as they were about to begin lowering me, I felt a slight tug. I knew instantly what had happened, the rope had come off the pulley at the top of the shaft!

I plunged down the black, vertical tunnel, braced myself, and, thump!

Voices came from the kitchen, “Steve, are you alright?”

I called back, “Yeah, no worries. I’m okay.”

I tried to open the hatch to the pub, but it was locked on the other side. I yelled up the shaft, “The hatch’s locked.”

Because the top of the Dumb Waiter was open, I was able to climb up some electrical cable brackets and hop out.

One evening, the manageress of the Dover’s pub, Sue, organised an Iron Man competition. We were in teams of four and had to take turns at sculling a pint of beer. We had to put the empty pint glass upside down on our heads to prove we finished it, eat a dry Weetabix, swallow a raw egg, run up the road and around the bus stop, back into the pub, and it was the next person’s turn. Whichever team finished first won a t-shirt for each member. Of course, the prize wasn’t the reason for taking part, it was just a bit of silly fun.

Towards the end of the night, I thought I’d get myself locked in the pub. I let my friend Moe know I was gonna do it, and told him I’d get a drink up the Dumb Waiter. The plan was when he had it, he’d wake Sue and we’d tell her I must have fallen asleep in the toilet.

I sneaked off, and no one saw me crawl under the pool table, but a bit later, I heard a male voice ask, “Where’d Steve go?”

Someone else replied, “He left a little while ago.”

I drifted off to sleep, and when my eyes opened, I forgot where I was. It was quiet and completely dark. As I sat up, WHACK! “Ah!” I hit my head on the bottom of the pool table. I didn’t know what time it was or where Moe was, and I thought, “Oh well, I might as well try the Dumb Waiter,” but I still couldn’t open it. The door was locked with a key.

I reckoned I might as well have a drink, so while sitting on the floor behind the bar, I poured a couple of drinks of this and that. I ate a couple of bags of chips and Pork Crackle, but I was bored and crawled back under the pool table. As I was drifting off to sleep, I made plans to wait until the cleaner came in, and when she had her back turned, I’d go out the door, and no one would know.

However, the next morning, I was startled by a high-pitched scream, making me sit up quickly, and Whack, “Ah!”

It was the cleaner, and as I stuck my head out to my right, she looked at me through teary eyes and said, “I saw your arm poking out from under the pool table. I thought you were dead.”

I told her, “I fell asleep in the toilet, and when I woke up, the lights were out, the doors were locked, and the carpet under the pool table was the most comfortable place to sleep.”

Word spread about how I’d been locked in the pub, and Sue tracked me down. She couldn’t apologise enough and told me, “I always check the toilets to see if anyone has fallen asleep in them, but last night, I forgot. I’m so sorry!”

I replied, “These things happen, Sue. You’re only human,” and thought, “Phew!”

Another competition at the Dover Castle was one I introduced. It was called “leg wrestling,” which I picked up in the Yukon. I’d been with some Indians in Watson Lake, when a couple of women showed me how to leg wrestle. Two people lie on their backs, right cheek to right cheek, with their feet facing in the opposite direction. When someone calls go, the two throw their right legs in the air, hook each other’s ankle, and the one who gets pulled over loses. It was popular among both males and females, although the girls were better at it than the fellas.

One morning, while looking through the paper for work, I saw an ad calling for a painter and decorator. I rang up, and the boss Brian, asked me to come to his office in Marylebone. I made my way there on the Tube.

It was a quick interview in a tiny office, where he asked me if I had much experience in painting and decorating. I didn’t, but I told him what I thought he needed to hear, and after a bit of a chat, he said to meet him at an address the next morning.

I turned up at the job and thought, This is odd! The place was surrounded by a high, grey stone wall, and the only point of entry was a gate with a white button like the one in the alley outside the police station. I pressed it and waited.

On hearing a female voice ask if I were the worker, I turned to see an elderly, short chubby Nun looking at me through the gate, and I smiled. It was a convent.

The Nun opened the gate and ordered, “Follow me please.”

We walked inside to an area where another fella was waiting.

The nun said, “Mother Superior is on holidays, and as a surprise, we want to renew her quarters. She’ll be home in a week, and it needs to be completed on time.” She then asked, “Will you be able to finish it? It looks like a lot of work!”

I had no idea if we could or not, but seeing the worry etched on her face, I said, “Yeah, no worries, Sister. We’ll get it done,” and I meant it.

Watching her leave, I introduced myself to the other bloke, a Kiwi named Richard, who was about my age. I asked him if he’d done much painting and decorating.

“Not really.”

“Have you done, any?”

“No!”

“Nah, me either, but never mind, she’ll be right. We’ll learn. Where’s Brian?”

No sooner had I spoken, than Brian came wandering through with his arms full of gear. He gave us a quick painting lesson, evidently, he suspected we were rookies. He showed us what else needed doing and left.

There was a lot of work to do. We had to revamp the sleeping quarters, a type of relaxing/reading room, a TV Room, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a lot of metal decorative bars in a large window. These needed a new coat of paint making them time consuming because of the amount of intricate work. Every wall, cornice, door, window frame, and ceiling needed painting.

Over the next few days, we made good progress, but with only a couple of days to go, we saw there was no way we would finish in time.

The distressed nun, who checked on us every ten minutes, was worried Mother Superior would have to be put up in a motel, but I told her it’d be finished, and I had a plan. Before leaving the convent in the late afternoon, I told her, “Don’t worry, Sister. It’ll get done.”
By the look in her eyes, I could see she wanted to believe me, but didn’t.

When I arrived the next morning, I had six others from the Dover Castle with me. They were there for two reasons. I told them they’d never get the chance to work in a London convent again, and I promised them free beer if the job was done by the end of the day.

The Nun was surprised to see the group of young travellers and smiled when I told her why they were there. After I allocated everyone their jobs, we got stuck into our work, laughing and joking as we laboured.

We had a chorus of songs coming from Mother Superior’s living quarters. “I went to the convent clothesline to get my knickers, but there was nun,” and so on.

The convent rang out with songs and laughter all day, and at the end of it, the job was completed! The place was cleaned up, the rooms looked brand new, and I must say they looked beautiful. It was great to see the relief on Brian’s face, for he too thought it was going to be a struggle. The beam on the old Nun’s glowing, pink and chubby-cheeked face, along with the joyous sparkle in her eyes was more payment than I could ever have expected.

Brian paid us well because he wanted us to do a school assembly area next. I bailed out of it though. I didn’t really like decorating and certainly hated painting.

I did have one more important thing left to do, put on free beer for my mates at the Dover Castle. That night the Dover was alive with laughter and songs ringing out about how nuns could get none.

Thanks friends!
“The Glowing Nun” was published in Journey Through My Mirror, 2025.

Bio: Steve Adams was born in Albany, in the far South West of Australia in 1968. He spent 12 years travelling Australia and the world until, in 1996 a horrific accident rendered him totally blind. He became a qualified counsellor and published two books titled Monkey On The Wing and Journey Through My Mirror. He now lives quietly in the Western Australian countryside with his family.

---

Laurence In Early Morning, poetry
by Sally Rosenthal

Your gray muzzle raised
to sharp, cold air,
now—white paws step gingerly
to avoid icy patches.
Once young and vibrant,
in old age, caution abounds,
no romping, playing fetch,
or rolling exuberantly in snow.
Your frail retriever body is
ensconced in a new red coat
to mitigate biting winds.
Will you live a few more months
to feel warm sun on your back
and smell lilacs and jasmine,
or will I always remember you
resplendent in crimson?

Bio: A poet and book reviewer, Sally Rosenthal lives with her rescue cat Tamsin and memories of her guide dogs. She is the author of Peonies In Winter: A Journey Through Loss, Grief And Healing and Winter Pilgrimage: A Journey Through Later Life.

---

His Friends Called Him Jack: An Elegy, poetry
by Brad Corallo

A profound connection, almost telempathic.
In some way Deeper than love.
For all my years here and even before,
my fur clad housemate and confidant,
who was always there.
Named for a swashbuckling rascal
from Canadian musical folklore.
Always glad to see me upon any arrival.
Bound together needing to share mutual
physical contact and body warmth.

I promised him upon his adoption,
as long as I lived, he would have a home
and place with me.
In my worst days,
times of struggle and illness,
I feared I might fail him.
But always found a way to continue.

And yet, he was first to move on, so unexpectedly.
No clew or telltale and
no time to say goodby!
I’ll never understand why!
And now, what of this aging human manchild?
Old, alone and bereft.
Like all lost strays wondering,
will I ever find my forever home?

NOTE: This elegy is for Jack Hinks: 4-6-13 to 9-23-24 (our time together). As he was a “rescue cat” he was believed to be between two and three-years-old when I adopted him on April 6, 2013. Jack was a large, orange beautiful male tabby.

Bio: Brad Corallo, a writer in multiple genres, is a Long Island native. His work has been published in 24 previous issues of Magnets & Ladders, in The William B. Joslin Outstanding Program Awards Journal “NYSID Preferred Source Solutions”, The Red Wolf Coalition, L.I. Able News, several additions of Avocet and in Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst. He has been a life-long student of fine wine, food, music, books, space exploration, several professional sports and relationships of all kinds. Brad is now happily retired after thirty eight years of employment in the human service field. Due to LCA (a very rare genetic retinal condition) Brad has experienced impaired and worsening vision throughout his lifetime

---

Inner Child, poetry
by Lynn D. Gilbert

My inner child has me detour
to the longer way home
to check if the black Angus heifers
are out grazing in their pasture
next door to the new three-story
apartment building sprouting up.

She wants to know if they’re chewing grass
or if their mysterious caretaker, never seen,
has brought in another round of hay,
a shaggy cylinder they’ll munch
from mouth level down to the ground
so that it comes to resemble
a giant mushroom with stem and top.

I can’t see them. Maybe they’re
taking their ease at the back
under the scrubby trees, cogitating.
What are their heifer thoughts?
Do they have an inner calf
to match my inner child,

that three-year-old I’ve seen
in an crackly old film my father made,
who ironed on her toy ironing board
with the broad end of the iron resolutely
sliding forward on the fabric,
despite an adult hand
reaching in from the edge of the frame
in a vain attempt to correct me.

Bio: Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems, twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in such journals as After Happy Hour Review, Blue Unicorn, carte blanche, The MacGuffin, Ponder Review, Sheepshead Review, and Southwestern American Literature. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and is an associate editor of Third Wednesday journal.

---

A Dining Room Table’s History, memoir
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

I don’t know where it came from, but my earliest memory of that table was in 1973, in the first home my family bought after moving to Sheridan, Wyoming. Round, dark, and made of oak, it stood in a corner of our large living room next to the kitchen, since the house lacked a dining room. I was twelve and about to enter sixth grade. When my younger brother Andy and I weren’t eating or playing games at that table, we were spread out across it doing homework.

The summer before eighth grade, due to my visual impairment, we decided it was time for me to learn touch typing so Mother wouldn’t have to transcribe my Braille assignments for my teachers. Knowing she lacked the patience for the task, Mother found an instructor who proved to be not only patient but delightful. I have many fond memories of sitting at that table, alone or with my teacher, clacking away on Mother’s manual typewriter. I progressed from random letters to sentences, paragraphs, and eventually letters and essays. For Christmas that year, I received an electric typewriter, which claimed its own spot on the table.

A year later, we moved to a three-story house with a ground-floor dining room, where the table finally took center stage. With me studying in the second-floor office and Andy tucked away in his attic bedroom, the table became our gathering space for family meals and marathon sessions of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly.

Before we built our music room addition, the piano and Andy’s drum set were squeezed into the dining room. We put on impromptu concerts for family and friends, who sat around the table as our captive audience. Later, after completing my music therapy internship in 1988, I remember sitting at the table with a Yamaha keyboard I’d received for Christmas, lost in the joy of figuring out its controls and sounds.

One New Year’s Eve, well into my adulthood, I found myself in a late-night poker game around the table. Exhausted and baffled by the rules, I took my turn as dealer and declared every card wild, somehow winning the entire pot. Needless to say, I was never invited to play poker again.

Years later, my parents divorced, and the house was sold. Andy eventually moved away, though I’m still here in Sheridan. I don’t know where that old dining room table ended up, but I’ll always treasure the memories gathered around it.

Bio: Abbie Johnson Taylor has published three novels, two poetry collections, a memoir, and a collection of short stories. Her work has appeared inThe Weekly Avocet, * Magnets and Ladders*, and other publications.

She is visually impaired and lives in Sheridan, Wyoming, where she worked as a registered music therapist with nursing home residents and in other facilities. She also cared for her late husband, who was totally blind and suffered two paralyzing strokes after they were married. This is the subject of her memoir and many of her poems.
Please visit her website at https://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

---

Froggin’, memoir nonfiction Honorable Mention
by Thom Schilling

Two hundred years ago, when my forefathers came to America, my great grandfather who was one of 13 children moved from the Port of New York and across Appalachia, finally settling in southern Indiana. The first stop in Indiana was Madison, a river city along the Ohio River known for its slaughterhouse and processing plants. You see, we were a family of knife-wielders dating back hundreds of years in Europe. From the moment they stepped off the boat, my forefathers followed their work, which led them towards Chicago, the meatpacking capital of the world. However, as we pressed west, family members left the western migration, because they found work in communities they liked, or because they married locals who had stronger ties to their families and communities. By the time our family reached Madison, only three of the 13 children who disembarked in New York were still with the family group. For the first few years, they lived in Madison where cattle, goats, and hogs were unloaded on the river front and herded down Main Street to the slaughterhouse for processing. It was a butcher’s dream.

A few years later, they closed the plant, and once again the family followed the pigs to Indianapolis and one of the biggest bacon factories in the Midwest.

Life was harsh, but we survived. Grandpa was from a large family, and eventually he had nine of his own. He and grandma learned to stretch a dollar further than bargain meats and wildlife would reach. We were poor and lived off the cheapest cuts of meat. As an example, poor families ate bologna, while we ate souse (a.k.a. head cheese), a meat jelly made from the head of a pig or calf which included tongue, feet, heart, cartilage, snouts, and sometimes brains, eyes, and ears formed into a loaf of firm sliceable jelly. Struggling to survive we ate almost everything that didn’t eat us first. Yes, cheap cuts of cattle and hogs and souse were our mainstay, but from time-to-time we strayed-away from slaughterhouse cuisine to more “locally grown” table foods. While living in Appalachia, the family grew up hunting for food. Naturally, we ate our fill of forest foods like squirrel, rabbits, ground hogs, and deer. Like other Appalachian children, my father could skin, gut, and clean small forest food by the time he was six years old, and could butcher a deer by age ten.

Years later, when my father had children of his own, he taught us to hunt, fish, and cook wild mammals. The last meat we learned to master was catching and preparing turtles and frogs. Snapping Turtles were slow moving and we’d snag them if they strayed too far from water or if we accidentally caught one on a fishing line.

Last on the list were frogs; they needed to be stalked and caught barehanded. Sure, most frog hunters do it from the safety of a dry canoe or rowboat and use frog gigging spears to jab the slippery little amphibians, but where’s the sport in that?

We were purists and preferred to get up close and personal; we actually waded in shallow creeks and caught frogs with our bare hands. I can still remember the first time my dad took me frog hunting or “Froggin” for short. It was on a moonless July evening, we dressed in old t-shirts, blue denim pants with a rope for a belt, and a pair of Keds high-top sneakers (the only ones that would stay on your feet when you were knee-deep in muck).

Afterwards, we scampered around the house to collect our Froggin’ gear: a couple burlap bags, twenty feet of binder’s twine, two six cell waterproof flashlights, ten or twenty fresh D Cell batteries, a can of 6 12 insect repellent, two beach towels, and a fresh set of dry clothes. After performing a short checklist we loaded the car and drove a few miles out of town to a slow-moving tributary with clean water known for having some of the best bull frogs in the state.

As we slid down the bank and into the cool stream, mosquitoes attacked the flashlight’s beams, buzzing and landing on our faces. A little 6 12 and we inched downstream. Scanning the shoreline for a pair of shining round eyes on the surface of the water. “Do you see the reflection?” asked dad.

Not brave enough to say, “No,” I muttered, “Uh, huh.”

“Keep the light shining in his eyes. It hypnotizes ‘em and he won’t move as long as you keep the beam on his eyes.” Dad inched closer to the frog. When he was within two feet his hand shot towards the frog; in a fraction of a second he grabbed the 10 inch bullfrog and held it up, proudly. “Now, it’s your turn.”

I shined my flashlight’s beam along the edge of the water, and saw two shiny eyeballs. “I whispered, “I’ve spotted one,” and plowed ahead.

“Hold on!” shouted dad. “That’s not a frog. Those are two slits. It’s a snake, probably a water snake but it could be a Cottonmouth. They are poisonous.”

Cautiously, we proceeded downstream, hunted for two more hours, and caught a dozen more frogs. The night air and dawdling stream turned teeth-chattering cold, so we called it a night. This was the first of many more Froggin’ trips.

Years later, I was married and moved my family to a Chicago bedroom community. Not an ideal location to teach my boys about the family history and about Froggin’, but there was a two acre pond behind the house so one July night, when the bullfrogs croaked loudly, I decided my boys needed to learn about Froggin’.

We dressed for a hunt and improvised our Froggin’ gear. Then, we silently entered the pond and sank mid-calf into the mix of decomposing seaweed and black stinky mud. We sloshed our way to the other side of the pond, where the cattails grew tall. Instantly, three flashlight beams focused on a pair of round eyes.

I whispered, “I’ll take this one. Remember to keep your light in their eyes and be real quiet.” Easing into position to strike there was a loud “SWOSH!” behind me. One of the boys tripped and fell face-first into the water. As the frog sank below the surface of the pond I heard an even louder “SMACK!!” as the other son was bitten by a fierce Will County mosquito. “Ouch, dammit! That hurt!”

As I helped a son stand, I told the other, “Spray a little insect repellent on you.”

“Can’t,” snapped the boy.

“Why?”

“Cause I left it at home.”

“Get up on shore and run home, you’ll be back in five minutes.”

Ten minutes later the soaking wet son next to me trembled and his teeth chattered from the cold, and there was no sign of the other. Reluctantly we went home; never to go froggin’ again.

However, the tradition did not die. Twenty-five years later I have a couple of grandsons and a granddaughter looking forward to their first froggin’ experience.

Bio: Thom Schilling is a graduate of Hanover College, and a Neurodivergent (NPH) Writer who enjoys writing stories about the unusual, the edgy, and all things weird. Since March 2024, Thom has had twenty-eight short stories published in the United States & Great Britain.

---

Part III. Against the Odds

On My Own Path, nonfiction Second Place
by Melanie Reitzel

From childhood on, I was never told I couldn’t unless it was a house rule or a matter of manners. Never go into a woman’s purse or the master bedroom without permission. No liquids in a dresser drawer, only on top of the dresser. Don’t start eating until the hostess picks up her fork. All lights off at bedtime. I broke that rule in sixth grade and read by the light of my electric blanket dial.

As for limitations on physical things I might want to try after contracting polio at two-and-a-half in 1950, resulting in left leg paralysis and requiring a heavy metal and leather buckled lock-knee leg brace, no one ever said: “No, you can’t;” “Don’t;” or “Better not even try.”

After eight months in the hospital, I stayed at my paternal grandparents’ house for a year so I could receive daily physical therapy—not something my single, full-time employed mother could manage for me. One day, when Grandmother Gail and I were out food shopping, I tripped and fell in a store aisle. Grandmother stopped the cart, looked down and said, “Pick yourself up, dear,” which I did. Another shopper in the aisle scolded my grandmother, who responded with, “She needs to learn how to pick herself up in many ways.”

My bedroom at my grandparents’ house was close to the top of the stairs that led to the living room. On Christmas Eve, I taught myself how to navigate stairs on my own without my brace. Once I was pretty sure my grandparents were asleep, I used my arms and good leg to bumble my brace-less leg out of bed. I then crawled to the top of the stairs. From there, I sat and scooted down four stairs on my butt—far enough to see the fireplace through the staircase balusters. I didn’t know the posts were called balusters when I was three but now, in my seventies, I’ve learned a few things. I didn’t see or hear Santa, but when I heard my grandparents mumble in their bedroom at the top of the stairs, I did a backwards lift-and-push up the stairs and crawled back to my bedroom. Later, in daylight, in my brace, rather than walk down the stairs, I had fun bum-bumping my way down. No clue how Santa had so quietly left so many presents for me under the Christmas tree.

When I was four, and living with my mother and new stepfather, I loved reading books, I had such a serious crush on Peter Pan that I decided to be Wendy and wrote the name “Wendy” in all my books. I told my Mother I did not steal the books from any Wendy. One night, I dreamt that Peter Pan loved me so much he sprinkled me with fairy dust and taught me how to fly. The next day, at my maternal grandmother’s apartment, I told her I could fly. Grandma Hedwig said nothing; she just sat at her table, legs and arms crossed, and watched me crawl onto the couch, brace and all, wave my arms, and leap off. I landed face down on the floor which knocked the air out of me. “You’ll be OK,” she said, letting me get up and learn on my own that no, I can’t fly.

A few years later, she gave me a book on ballet. First position: heels together, toes pointing outward? More like 120 degrees than 180. Prance and spin on my toes? Never. Arm positions? Easy-peasy. But no ballet in my future. Besides, any lacey tutu would get caught in the buckles of my brace.

I didn’t go to any special schools; I just went to schools. In kindergarten, I would climb up the ladder to the sled in the playground, hold onto the rails, step on to the top with my right leg, swing my braced leg over, sit down slowly, and slide down. No teacher warning, just the other kids cheering, “Here comes Water Melon-i.e.!” They made more fun of my name than my leg.

Later, in grade school, I played kickball; I would balance on the braced leg, swing my right leg back, and kick the ball past the bases. I had to have a designated runner, which made me feel cool. Tetherball? Stand pretty much in one place and use my long, strong arms to slam the crap outta the ball on a chain. I was a champ. Swim? Sure. Take off the brace at the side of the pool, sit on the edge, slip in, push off with the good leg, and put the arms to work, while the good leg kicked, and the other leg dragged along. No butterfly stroke. Sidestroke, no problem. Butterfly? That requires two functioning legs; this butterfly would just sink.

Ice skating? Nope—tried it wearing my school shoes while watching a friend at the skating rink take her lesson. I held onto the railing and planted the flat soles of my saddle shoes on the ice. Oops, good thing I was holding onto the rail. Roller skating? No. Hopscotch? Sure. Hop on with the right leg on the single squares. At the two parallel squares, hop and land on the right square; let the left leg clunk down on the left square. Skipping rope? My skips were too slow and too low, but I was great at swinging the rope while someone else skipped. Tennis? I was thirteen and staying at my dad and stepmother’s house for the summer where they had a tennis court. I wanted to try. Dad handed me a racket, and from his side of the court, hit the ball over the net—too far and too fast for me to swat the ball before it bounced off the court onto the lawn. Just as well—I’ve never understood the scoring terms in tennis.

The invitation to seventh grade cotillion arrived at the house. My mother heard the mail carrier, ran to the truck pen and check in hand, filled out the form, stamped the return envelope, and handed it back to the carrier. I got in. Waltz? No problem. Square dance? I’ll sit on the bench and chat with a shy guy. Bowling? Pick up the ball from the rack, limp to the line, turn a bit back to my right, and roll the ball down the alley. Strike!

It was good to set my own limits. Somehow all four parents and three grandparents must have come to some sort of mutual agreement; Let her try and figure it out for herself. After graduating from college in Art Practice, I realized art would not be my career. I was a decent secretary and bookkeeper, but didn’t want to sit at a desk, type, answer phones, and bring my boss coffee for the rest of my work life. I trained for teaching Montessori, but realized that while I was good with the children individually, the hubbub of twenty kids all at once scattered my brain. My sweet spot was talking with the parents about their child.

while in labor with my first son, the penny dropped as the nurse started the IV in my left wrist. I looked at her and said, “I want your job.” The IV was running normal saline, no Demerol. Half a year spent in hospital after contracting polio, five corrective surgeries—hospitals smelled like my second home. From the age of six, I’d helped bottle feed, burp, diaper change, and cuddle my four half-brothers and half-sister. Maternity nursing made sense.

Nursing school required a physical exam for entrance. Briefly, in my twenties, I’d been able to navigate without a brace. The doctor took one look at my smaller left foot and ordered an x-ray. Pointing at the image of my shallow hip angle, he declared, “How the hell do you even walk?” “One step at a time,” was my reply.

I was accepted and graduated from nursing school and worked for 38 years as a maternity nurse specialist in lactation at Stanford. After my second pregnancy when the hormone relaxin loosened my pelvic joints, I returned to work in a leg brace.

Since the availability of polio vaccines in the mid 1950’s, cases of polio, and memories of it, had seriously declined by the 1980’s. For most patients, and many physicians, polio was a thing of the past. One patient asked if my limp and hardware was due to a skiing accident. Another thought maybe I’d fought in Vietnam. But one new mother, a physician, put two and two together and asked “polio?” “Yes. 1950.” She pointed to my brace leg and knowing how much time in a day nurses spent on their feet, said: “Hon, you’re not supposed to go for the burn!” The only person in my life who’d ever told me what they thought I couldn’t or shouldn’t do. I didn’t tell her that I knew on my own when I needed to sit and chart before walking to another patient or down to the cafeteria for lunch. I just smiled, and asked her how I could help her and baby with breastfeeding.

I’d answer questions. I’d help however I could and would refer to a specialist as needed, but every mother and child needs to set their own goals, acknowledge and accept their limitations, consider their work-to-benefit ratio, and find their own paths to success.

Bio: Melanie Reitzel is a retired maternity nurse specialist who started the Lactation Program at Stanford Hospital. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her work has been published in journals such as ZYZZYVA, Poet Lore, 14 Hills, THEMA, North American Review, Adirondack Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, A River and Sound Review, Prose Poem Project and in various anthologies.

---

How Chronic Pain Tries to Erase Me, nonfiction
by Elle Becker

I’m invisible. Like someone in a fog, you might sense that I’m there, like a shadow in your periphery. My words may reach you, but I am still unseen.

I want to be seen.

I disappear the moment I say, “I’m in pain.” That’s when people quickly flinch and turn away while they say, “I’m sorry.”

I understand their fears. I know pain and illness are uncomfortable. Pain is impolite. It overstays its welcome. It is unwanted company — a negative in a world awash in negativity.

Pain is subjective. You can’t feel the physical pain that I feel, and I thank the gods for that. It also means that when I say I’m hurting, people don’t fully believe me. They’d have to show compassion, and that’s just too much work for some. Empathy demands effort. Others care, but they can’t empathize.

Some don’t see me because they don’t want to. Deny it, but it’s clear—they don’t even look at me as a human as they reject me. At my last appointment, my doctor looked at my chart on his laptop, and never at me, the human being. Doctors talk at you about the specific part of the body they treat, then bill the insurance company.

The friends I had when I became ill all disappeared — which was okay with me. I had unfortunately picked friends who were so shallow that they “would, like, for sure do an ice bucket challenge and stuff if the cause is trending.” Otherwise, it was, “So, why can’t you come out tonight? Why are you always sick?” and my answer every time was, “Because I’m chronically ill. My diseases keep making me sick.”

Rare disease sufferers get no cheerleaders. What people don’t understand, they ridicule. Even worse, I threaten the grand illusion people create—the one where hard work and positivity cure suffering, perfect health is a choice, and youth is a guarantee.

Nobody wants to think about a forty-something woman who is full of useless facts and suffers from severe chronic pain and illness. I’m much cooler on paper.

Writing is where I reveal parts of myself, and pretend I’m an open book. I’ve glued most of the pages together to hide the parts I can’t bear to read again.

I have invisibility within me. Fighting me every second I am alive. The more that pain comes to me, the smaller I shrink. I carry a villain who wants to erase me—my worst enemy—around.

You see, I’m in agony.

Not metaphorically. It’s not emotional pain. That would be too abstract. I’m in abject physical misery. Pain gnaws at my bones, burns my nerves, and leaves me breathless.

Pain wakes me up at night if I move at all. I haven’t slept a full eight-hour night since 2015. Shadows and whispers creep and crawl from the corners of my eyes, courtesy of sleep deprivation.

Sometimes my flared-up body quiets to a point where I crash, and I sleep from clinical exhaustion for several hours.

My anguish and pain get lonely at night. Pain yells and orders me to stay up and keep it company. Other times, my sleep is violated as it slithers its way into my dreams. I wake from those nights with my throat hoarse from screaming.

I once had a nightmare that I was being held down while a shadow villain placed my legs into a human-sized meat grinder. Help never came. In reality, my legs ached while I slept. I had hip and knee subluxations (partial dislocations), bone pain, plus burning sciatica and both small and large fiber nerve diseases. It incorporated itself into my dream in the most fucked up way possible. Thanks a lot, brain.

I come to consciousness every morning with a literal gasp. Awareness of my body comes rushing back to me like a lightning strike. I have about three seconds of blissful, painless consciousness before the torment comes rushing back. For a decade now, I’ve been an early bird, all because my pain controls my circadian rhythm.

My pain doesn’t fade-it shapeshifts. If pain had a body, it would be a skinwalker. My back and neck scream at me. I don’t want another spinal surgery. I ignore it as long as I can.

My muscles squeeze, swell, and cramp. My joints wobble when I walk and try to slip from their sockets, especially my left hip. I get full-body charley horses down to that painful curl in my toes to remind me I’m alive. My bones feel like they are being crushed if I walk too fast — and all of that combined would be enough, right?

It’s not. There’s a poisoned icing on this cake of doom. I’m talking about my nerves. Not the anxiety kind, but the nerve endings that allow you to feel touch and be felt. Mine are broken.

Two neurological diseases (severe CIDP and small fiber neuropathy) create constant torture. My nerve endings are pulsing, needles stabbing, and red hot burning. Invisible creepy-crawlies. Numbness and tingling. It is utter agony — all over my arms and legs. Nerve pain has made me invisible to the world because it takes all of my energy to stay upright and be positive.

You would think I’d learn to anticipate it, but I am still sometimes blindsided by the intense pain. It’s violent. The breeze on my arms often feels like sandpaper made of broken glass. Clothing can be torture. The shower spits out little needles of acid. All of my nerve endings feel like fire ants are biting them.

Fuck you, pain, I think. Fuck you for never leaving. I hate your guts so much that I wish you were a person so I could murder you. Painfully. I’m sentenced to suffering for the rest of my life. Every microsecond for all time.

Yet I smile!

If I don’t smile, I’ll buckle, and I’ll fall. An unseen, forgotten casualty. That’s not my style. I may stumble, but I’ve never given up. I will fight. Life is worth living. A smile means I’m more noticeable, and it feels good to have a grin on my face.

Do you see me yet? You’re getting there.

I refuse to be a ghost during my most precious story — my life. No longer will I remain invisible as I drift through another day. I’m still smiling.

Here is a hard truth: If you walk through hell daily, you will not survive unless you leave room for grace. A genuine smile is the armor I wear in a world where suffering reduces my humanity. I invite grace and peace in, and let go of my resentments. I make room for pain, too. Whether I like it or not, my pain isn’t leaving.

I smile because somewhere out there, another person is suffering like I am, and I want them to know they are not alone—and there is peace to be found between heartbeats.

I’m here, and I’m alive! Each breath in my lungs is an announcement of my victory. Each word that flows out of me cements the legacy I’ll someday leave behind — my voice.

My truth.

Pain is distracting, but I follow hope, my guide.

My words are a lighthouse in the fog, thrown out for anyone who wants to keep hanging on. You don’t have to roar to be seen. A mighty whisper can also command attention.

Do you see me? Are you closer now?

I choose to live fully and completely, and not despite the pain. I live fully with it.

I have accepted that pain is part of me, but it doesn’t define me. Oh, it often runs my days and tries to control my life. I have ceased fighting it and accepted that it is as much “me” as my eyes, laugh, or hair. I don’t have to like it, but I practice radical acceptance. I acknowledge it and I give it the respect it is due.

Respect is earned, and I have seen my pain overcome every obstacle or treatment I put forth to stop it. It never gives up, never tires. It is a worthy foe, and though I hate it, I respect its strength and desire to consume me.

Finding different ways to reduce pain is important, and I do what I can to dull it.

Medication, meditation, immunotherapy, cannabis, biofeedback, and a therapist. That’s my war chest to fight with when the pain takes my breath away. Environmental triggers beyond my control set me off in a flare every day during the summer.

I can breathe a little now that I’m on a serious immunotherapy regimen. I know I’ve done everything to help myself.

I am choosing to be visible. I choose happiness despite the soul-sucking diseases that legitimately threaten to bring me down every day.

My life story is about so much more. It’s about my willingness and strength to live fully with it. You may see my pain when it creeps through the cracks in my mask, but I ask that you don’t turn away. See me instead.

I was in the fog, but I was never lost. I floated on your fringe. If you choose, you can look my way. My voice will keep calling out, trying to be a beacon for others who are tormented.

I refuse to be invisible. See me.

Bio: Elle Becker is a writer, speaker, and instructor living with rare diseases, including severe CIDP, small fiber neuropathy, and chronic pain. Published in Prevention magazine, ACPA’s journal, The Chronicle, Five on the Fifth, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, and The Mighty. Multiple platforms, including Medium and Substack, have curated her essays, humor, poetry, and fiction. She founded The Rare Bird Writes, where she teaches writing. Elle loves all dogs, good books, cheese, and nice humans — in that order — and still intends to become a crazy dog lady.

---

Inherited Weather, poetry
by David Anson Lee

I used to think silence arrived
as an event:
something that happened to me
and stayed.
But there are older climates
moving through the body.
My father carried winters
he never named.
My mother spoke monsoon grammar:
pressure, pause, rupture.
I did not choose this weather.
It was already arranged
before I learned direction.
Even quiet has ancestry.
It arrives trained
to recognize certain rooms,
certain absences of sound
that feel like recognition
before meaning.
I walk inside it now
as one walks inheritance:
not asking permission,
not mistaking origin for explanation.
The sky does not ask
why it is inherited.
It continues.

Bio: David Anson Lee is a poet and physician based in Texas. He has a severe hearing disability, which shapes but does not define his attention to perception, silence, and sensory experience. His work often explores embodiment, inheritance, and the natural world through precise, unsentimental imagery and a restrained lyrical voice. He writes at the intersection of medicine, aging, and lived experience, and his recent work has appeared in multiple literary journals, including Magnets & Ladders, where his poem “Silence Has Texture” received First Place in the Spring/Summer 2026 poetry contest.

---

The River Does Not Reply, poetry
by David Anson Lee

I once believed the river
was answering something.
That its surface flicker
was agreement,
or refusal,
or translation.
Now I understand
it does not participate.
It passes.
Stone does not persuade it.
Light does not instruct it.
My standing on the bank
does not complete a sentence
the water began.
It is not speaking.
It is not silent.
It is beyond attention:
the way weather is beyond witness.
Still, I return
as if repetition might make relation.
But the river
does not learn my name.
It carries it away
without noticing.

---

Meaning, nonfiction
by Leonard Tuchyner

As I lay in my bed, my wife Diane was trying to get me to respond, with little success. When the Rescue Squad arrived, I felt them lift me out of bed with the bed sheets onto a gurney, then wrestle my body out the front door, down the steps and across the front lawn to their waiting ambulance. Then they lowered the gurney wheels and pushed the gurney into the rear of their ambulance, where they secured it to the side. One of them stayed in the large carrying compartment. I felt relief that they hadn’t dropped me. Expecting a smooth ride to the hospital, I was surprised at how the vehicle failed to smooth the road bumps, like it had no suspension system.

I knew we were going to the University of Virginia Hospital. When we arrived at the destination, I was parked in a room where the waiting was interminable.

The next thing I remember was a hallucination. Believing myself to be at home, I had a proprietary attitude. But the hospital seemed to have commandeered my house. I was having an argument with a doctor that I wanted to get out of bed, and why had they turned my own home into a hospital room? What gave him the right to keep me prisoner in my own home? He told me that I was in my own house but was not allowed out of the bed. He told me that I had a stroke, and if he let me get out of bed, I would fall down for certain. I had regained my voice, but was not in touch with reality. I told him that, and he said I was hallucinating. That made me very angry. Wondering where Diane was, I felt abandoned. I had no idea how long they had kept me a prisoner in that facility, which was my home but only in my mind.

The next hallucination I had was of my traveling bed. It seemed to be traveling on its own. This was not surprising. Ordinarily, stationary objects seem to move of their own accord while I’m sitting in them. For example, when sitting in a stationery car, it seems to be moving of its own accord — forward, backward, or side to side. It is continuously changing directions. This is like when you twirl in circles. When you stop, the room seems to continue to move. This sensation does not fool me. So, when I know it is not really happening, I will take for what it is — a false impression. But this time it was real for me. My bed could move through surfaces like brick walls. Then it would take me with it. When I found myself going outside, there was no falling. Altitude was maintained, unless what I wanted to view was at a lower or higher level. The bed would accommodate my needs. This could be fun. I explored many areas of the hospital during that hallucination experience.

What seemed like a couple of weeks later, Diane came and got me to go for an individual meeting with another doctor, to see what the next steps would be in my recovery. I didn’t try to hide my wandering bed, because to me, it was no hallucination. I commandeered a kind of people-moving conveyance and took her for a ride on a mall, on the University campus. This device had the same roving capabilities as my bed. The whole episode was probably a hallucination, because Diane left me there to wait for hospital personnel to come get me, which they did after the mall closed. And the ferry never came at all.

Returning to the doctor’s consultation. They wanted my permission to put a feeding tube in my nose to enable feeding me. This was not a hallucination, and they had to be very persuasive to convince me. The whole notion of being fed through my nose disgusted me. But the doctor said my system wouldn’t be able to handle regular food, and the tube was necessary to keep me alive during my recovery. Consequently, against my better judgment, I acquiesced. The insertion was quite unpleasant — painful, in fact. Such tubes interfere with everything one does, including sleeping.

My next hallucination involved my decision to try to get into a special rehab program. In this dream, I was seeking an interview with one of the doctors who would be crucial to my quest. I was in a large basement with a row of tables which had other patients who were applying for the same program. The next thing I knew, I was outside in snowy weather with many patients lined up along a tall iron fence meant to keep us out of the enclave it formed. On the other side were zoo animals and a stage with a podium. Patients were being let in to be considered. Once in a while, one of the interviewers would make a speech.

Suddenly I found myself naked in the middle of a field. A gang of nurses were holding me down and trying to insert a catheter in my penis. I was humiliated and in agony. Suddenly I was in sand, still naked and unable to stand. Kneeling, I was able to look into excavations cut into the side of the dune. In one of these, there was a family consisting of parents and children, including a baby. Love spilled out of that enclosure. There were other dwellings. The rest of those cubicles were not as friendly and welcoming. I knew there was some kind of meeting going on. Another patient told me that catheterization was unnecessary.

Without warning, I was back in the field of snow. I knew I’d been accepted for the program and a series of tents had been set up before nightfall. Still naked and unable to stand, I tried to make myself comfortable. Snow covered the floor of the large tent, and other patients had found beds above the snow and were settling down to sleep the night. Trying to find comfort, I burrowed into the snow on the ground and settled down for the night, awakening often and crawling to a new space in my effort to ease my discomfort.

Back in the real world and equally uncomfortable, I wrestled with daunting realities. Still not being allowed out of bed, there was constant need to use the bathroom. A male aide would lower the bars meant to keep me in, and help me get out of bed. He would sit there while I did my thing. Then he would wheel me back to bed. However, I needed to go again. The nurse’s aides were very angry.

“You just went.”

“I know. But I need to go.”

“I have other patients. You have to hold it.”

“Can you get me a urinal or something to pee in?”

“Okay,” she said dubiously.

The urinal was filled by the time she came back. The experiment was only partially successful. Some of the pee spilled out in my attempts to use it.

“The bed is soaked. I’ll have to change your diaper now.”

Having to wear diapers was humiliating. But I was learning to live with shame.

“These diapers are meant to absorb urine. Just go into the diaper.”

“You mean wet?”

“Yes,” she said out of frustration.

Of course, that didn’t help at all. They stopped responding at all to my calls and dealt with my messes. My self-esteem couldn’t go lower.

The only bright spots came from my wife. Her smile lit up my day. The thing was that I was completely dependent on the smart phone to stay in touch when she wasn’t there, and that meant that It needed to be charged. I couldn’t reach the charger. Again, I was dependent on the nurses’ aides.

A new factor was about to enter the equation. Speech and physical therapists began working with me. They saw me with fresh eyes, treated me with respect, and appraised me from a professional perspective. One of them took it upon herself to get rid of my nasogastric tube. She didn’t see it as necessary. Eventually she succeeded, and they removed it. They started feeding me by mixing my food with applesauce. Got me back on my feet within two weeks and were delighted with my progress. My self-esteem was returning. I was succeeding at something. Essentially, they saved my life and gave me the courage to proceed with healing.

After three weeks, I was ready to leave the hospital to continue my recovery at home. The rehab people maintained my services, then got me enrolled in community resources which continued work in physical and speech services. I’m finished with physical therapy but continue with speech therapy. Short-term memory is still a problem. Long-term memory is still good, but I am unable to see beyond twelve feet. There is a problem staying vertical, and I often find myself in a prone position appropriate for taking a nap. Stamina is a problem, but I’m coming along. I’m studying JAWS, and I’m approaching competency. That is due primarily to Alice Massa, who has been my teacher and call-when-I-need-help wizard. I owe her.

---

Inside-Out, fiction
by Norm Cowie

“Well, sir, your physical came out splendid. Before you go, do you want a flu shot?”

The words made their way through directed waves that travelled through the air, entering the ear. Then the auditory senses communicated it to the brainstem through the basilar membrane, cochlea and by vibrations of the eardrum and middle ear drums to the auditory cortex.

After that, the message was communicated to the rest of the body via the nervous system.

“A flu shot? Wait,” the butt said. “Does this mean a shot in the cheeks?”

The cheeks on the face quivered and yiped, “No, we don’t want a shot!”

“He meant butt cheeks,” the nose snorted.

“What?” the butt butted in. “I don’t want a shot either.”

“Oh, sit down and relax,” the brain said. “We’ve never had a flu. We don’t need this shot.” It then directed the mouth to say to the doctor, “No thanks.”

“Whew,” the butt farted in relief.

Then they heard the doctor again, “How about a shingles shot?”

All the body parts figured the answer would be the same, so there was no reaction.

But there was an odd delay from the brain.

The lungs took a deep breath and then one of them asked, “Why haven’t you said no?”

“I don’t know,” the brain replied after a pause. “I mean, our daughter had shingles once. So did our brother-in-law. His was horrible. He had itchy rash around his entire torso. He was in horrible pain from the nerve damage.”

“I vote yes!” the skin burst out “I don’t want to be itchy!”

“And I see shingles commercials all over,” the eyes said piercingly. “Those commercials are on all day, and they even have signs up at the drug store.”

“Shingles doesn’t care,” the skin, lungs and brain all said together laughingly.

After the mirth died down, the brain said, “It wouldn’t hurt, I guess.”

“That’s because the shot doesn’t go in the brain,” the butt shot out.

“Oh, don’t be an ass,” the brain said. “A shingles shot goes in the arm.”

“Ah, okay,” the butt said.

“What?” the left arm muscles squeaked.

“Dibs!” the right arm muscles chirped.

“What do you mean, ‘dibs?’” the left arm muscles shot back.

“Dibs on not being the arm that gets the shot!” righty said smugly.

“Hey, no fair,” lefty whined.

“Oh, stop it,” the skin interjected. “This would be way better than shingles. And believe me, we don’t want a nerve disorder.”

“We sure don’t! We love order,” a bunch of nerves shouted like Minions in perfect unison.

“Okay, everyone quiet,” the brain interrupted. “Let me think.”

“Who made you the boss?” the heart asked. “Shouldn’t we vote on this?”

“Duh. I’m the brain! The smart one. If I wasn’t for me, you’d all be lost.”

“I don’t know,” heart said. “We do fine during sleep when you get closed down. The rest of us are still working while you’re zoned out.”

“I’m not closed down! I’m dreaming then!”

The heart beat a hard one, “You’re resting. I’m still pumping blood.”

“He is really pushy,” some blood droplets agreed.

“I meant me,” the heart said.

“We did, too,” the droplets replied.

“But, but, you need me to get around,” heart countered.

“Oh, we get that,” the blood said. “But sixty beats a minute? That seems a bit much.”

“We were talking about the brain,” a lung gasped.

“Right, the know it all,” the liver snarled.

“I do know it all. And I control everything,” the brain said arrogantly. “We can’t even move without me.”

“Can you move our ears?” the butt asked snidely.

“Hey, I heard that,” one of the ears replied.

“No, but you can’t live without me,” the brain interjected.

“Me too,” the heart said after a beat.

“Um, heart transplant. Don’t try to outthink me,” the brain said snidely. “There’s no way you could live without a brain.”

“Sure we can,” the butt said. “We would just become a politician.”

There was laughter from the nerves.

“Well, I don’t care,” the brain continued. “I control the mouth, so I get to say. And we’re going to have the shot.”

“You don’t control me,” the mouth muttered.

Then a sound came through the ears. “What did you say, sir?” It was the doctor.

The brain quickly said, “Shh, mouth, see, you need me. Remember, anything you say gets heard outside the body. Just tell the doctor, ‘Sorry”

“Um, sorry,” the mouth said to the doctor. “I misspoke. I meant to say, sure, let me have the shingles vaccine. I just wanted to know if there if anything needed to control a reaction.”

The doctor said, “Oh, don’t worry. This vaccine is 99% effective.”

“Got it,” the mouth replied. “I don’t expect to win the one percent lottery.”

The doctor laughed. “You’re right. Lotteries are hard to win. Anyway, the nurse will come get you and take you to the lab for the shot. Have a nice day.”

“Okay, thanks, Doctor,” the brain directed the mouth to say.

After a bit, a nurse came by, and took them to the lab.

“So how does this shingles shot work?” the heart asked.

The brain thought for a moment. “I think the vaccine is actually a weak or inactive germ that gets inserted in us. It triggers our anti-bodies to react and build up a force that would be able to protect us if the virus actually did invade.”

“You’re approving an invasion?” one of the lungs gasped.

“Don’t worry,” the brain said. “It wouldn’t be a full invasion, and we will build up our defenses.”

“Yep, we could handle it,” a protein anti-body piped up. It looked like a pop star with two heavy chains and two light chains. “We wipe out antigens,” it said proudly. It puffed its chest out. “We are the immune system. That’s why we don’t get sick no matter what the mouth lets in.”

“Hey,” the mouth protested. “It’s not my fault if the brain doesn’t make the fingers wash. Or if the lungs suck in an airborne virus.”

“And we help, too,” some mucus membranes piped up.

“And we make you antibodies,” some white blood cells chimed in. “And once we get this vaccine, you’ll need us to make more of you to protect against this virus.”

“All right, all right,” the brain interjected. “Calm down. Here comes the nurse again.”

There was some silence as they waited for the nurse.

Then.

“Oh, it’s coming,” the skin said, feeling the alcohol swab.

Another moment of silence.

Then the right arm muscles yiped in pain. “Ow, the shot was supposed to be made in lefty.”

“Tee hee,” Lefty snickered.

“Ah, I can feel the vaccine going through me,” the right arm muscles said. “It feels grotesque.”

The antibody jiggled its Y-shaped chains. “Okay, it’s up to me now. Hey white blood cells. Once I test the invaders and we determine exactly what we’ll be fighting, get ready to start making more of me that can handle whatever defenses it has, okay?”

It disappeared to go find the invading force.

When it made its way to the arm muscles, the antibody picked up a strange sensation. Then, peeking around some of the muscle, it got its first glance of the vaccine.

“It’s not alive, but it acts as if it is,” it whispered.

A bunch of nerves ran off to tell the brain.

“But, but, it’s so like a virus. It’s like … a zombie!”

It turned to another nerve. “We have to warn everyone. It’s a bunch of dead zombie pathogens! Warn the brain. Tell the white blood cells. We need a full army of soldiers. It’s an invasion of the dead!”

“Yessir,” the nerve saluted, and rushed off with a pack of other nerves into the myelin sheath to tell this to the brain.

“We don’t have enough antibodies, it’s going to take days for our defense,” the antibody mused. It jiggled its chains nervously. It turned to some other nerves that had been watching nervously. “Warn everyone. Put everyone from the adaptive immune system on full alert and figure out what defenses we need to kill these creatures. And tell the innate system to stand by.”

The nerves swept away to spread the word.

Several days went by, with the intruders spreading throughout the body, fought by the few antibodies that could put up a defense.

The white blood cells showed up at the war council.

“We’ve identified what we need and we are creating a new antibody, which will be able to wipe these dead creatures out. We just need a little more time to work with the immunoglobulins.”

“We’re holding them off so far,” the original anti-body said, but we’re going to need a lot of help. These things are scary.”

“Don’t worry,” the white blood cells said. “We are going to have more than enough soldiers to eliminate them, for good.”

“As quick as you can,” the right arm muscles complained. “And see if you can do something to reduce the swelling. It hurts.”

An arm nerve nodded in agreement and ran off with other nerves into the tunnel of the myelin sheath.

“We’ll do our best,” the white cells said.

A few more days went by. The defense was holding off the assault.

Finally, the army of immune system soldiers specifically built to fight this intruder rushed towards where the vaccine had last been seen and marked. It looked like Scottish Braveheart warriors running at the invading English Army.

“Kill!” The antibodies yelled in unison.

When they made it to the front line of the vaccine, they swarmed it, antibodies binding to the attacking zombies’ surfaces, clobbering and killing the invaders.

“There’s more over there!” an antibody shouted.

“Yeah!” the defending army roared. “And it stomped the enemy.”

“There’s more there, too” another yelled.

The army swerved and wiped out those attackers as well.

“And over there!” another shrieked.

There was a scream of terror. “Wait I’m not the enemy!” a voice cried out.

But it could not be heard above the roars of the swarming antibody army.

“You’re hurting me!” the voice cried out again.

The battle raged on.

“Aagh!” the voice kept crying out, but its voice died as the fighting continued.

The battle raged on, until there was no movement from the enemy.

“I think we got them all,” a white cell leader said after a while.

“Looks like it,” one of the leading antibodies said, an immunoglobulin at attention next to it.

“Okay, have them stand by,” the white cell said. “And keep an eye out.”

The antibody nodded. “You heard the order,” it said to the immune system warriors.

They reluctantly backed away from the battle.

As they did, the leader noticed something. The myelin sheath that the nerves used to travel to the brain was ripped to shreds like bark torn from a tree branch.

“Oh, crap,” the white cell said. It turned to the army of nerve messengers, waiting patiently. “Um, can you see if you can make it to the brain through that?”

“Yessir,” the nerves saluted. They hurried off toward the hollow tube-like thing and as they entered, they heard a moaning from the myelin sheath. Some of the nerves slipped inside the neurofibrils.

In seconds, most of them were back.

“I’m sorry sir. When we try to travel up the sheath, we get dumped because of the damage to the sheath. While some can get through, it won’t let enough of us go to communicate the message clearly.”

“We can feel it, too!” another voice said.

Is that you, leg muscles? the white cell asked.

“Yeah, we’re having trouble getting a message through to the nerves to the brain, so it can’t tell us what we need to do. If brain wants to walk, it can’t tell us. We don’t know when to stand. Or kick. We’re mostly cut off.”

“Crap,” the white cell snarled.

“We can spasm,” the leg muscles said. “But we can’t walk because, well, we can’t communicate with the muscles on the other part of the legs either. Communication is almost complete shut off from anything above the waist.”

“It’s not our fault,” the horde of nerves said.

The cell turned to them, “Yes, I know. It was our army. We killed the enemy and then we attacked healthy cells by accident. It was an autoimmune error.”

“What do we do now?” the nerves asked.

“Well, we’re in a paraplegic body now. I guess we have to wait and see if the sheath can repair itself, and…”

The legs spasmed. “That could take years! It’s like bark regrowing on a tree!”

The cell took a deep breath though it had no lungs, and let out non-existent air.

“Yeah, it’s not good. Glad I can’t hear what brain is thinking right now.”

“Hmm,” one of the legs muscles said.

“What up?” another asked.

The first one said, “We don’t like everything the brain demands. You know, like running up hills.”

“Oh, yeah!,” the other said. “Or climbing stairs.”

“Taking the dog on long walks.”

“Even in the rain.”

“Exactly! Now it can’t boss us around!”

“The brain is so arrogant.”

“It’s a know it all.”

“For sure!”

“So now we’re free of it.”

“Right, and we can spasm party all we want.”

“I guess this isn’t such bad news at all,” the first muscle said.

---

No Freeport in the Storm, memoir
by Anthony R. Candela

I was certainly happy that neither of the two bodies being carried off the ship was mine or my wife’s. In fact, it was a near-death experience in the North Sea a year prior that provided the wisdom to dodge the bullet that led to the untimely demise of the souls we watched being carted away by the county coroner. Shaken, sick, and with heads bowed, we who had survived the ordeal that had led to their untimely end limped ashore.

My wife and I thought we were smart. We fixed on the idea that we could out slick the modern-day land barons who sold condominium timeshares to people either too scared or too frugal to spread their vacation dollar far and wide. We answered an advertisement that included traveling partly on their dime to Ft. Lauderdale, weathering their sales pitch, and then enjoying a few days in the Bahamas to boot. We had always wanted to get to the islands, but one thing or another had gotten in the way of our making the trip. A short cruise from Ft. Lauderdale seemed like a perfect way to get there. If not for that old Mother, Nature, our scheme would have worked.

The land barons put us up in a comfortable hotel in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. The hot and breezeless August air not only failed to provide even momentary relief from the Florida heat and humidity, but belied turbulent meteorological activity energizing only a few miles to the east. Out in the Atlantic the caldron was beginning to churn.

The next day, we and six other couples dutifully reported to the Camelot Realty office, just outside the city limits. “It only rains at night here,” I quipped. “We’re standing in the Excalibur room and I’ll bet the owner’s name is Arthur,” my spouse joined in.

In the short time we had to talk with the other couples before the realtors descended upon us, we learned that all 14 of us had no intention of buying into the timeshare scheme. We would politely listen and then simply leave. None of us wanted to end the day $20,000 poorer than when we entered the fray.

Suddenly, a bevy of good-looking young women and men surrounded us and proceeded with the show and tell. The saleswomen sidled up to the men and the salesmen did likewise with the women. I stifled an impulse to chuckle. The subliminal impression they tried to give us was just too transparent. Life in their condos would be replete with sensual pleasure.

As planned, we politely nodded at all the wonderful features in first the one-bedroom, then the two-bedroom condos. I admit that I almost succumbed to the idea that, with one of these condos in hand, I could saunter nude and unencumbered, one of the saleswomen beckoning me all the way, from the Jacuzzi to the private swimming pool that accompanied each unit. Two hours later, at the strategic moment and as planned, we shook our heads in a final ‘No’ and fled. Waving good riddance to the condos (albeit semi-apologetically to some of the sexier sales staff), we bee-lined it to the hotel to check out. Next stop, Freeport.

Early the next morning, we left Ft. Lauderdale, expecting to see it again only briefly as we passed through en route to the airport at the end of our luxurious Bahamian sortie. We weren’t sure about a few things. For example, should we worry that the small ship that would carry us the 90 miles across the patch of Atlantic between Florida and Freeport was called “The Minnow?” Did the name of the Bahamian resort hotel we’d booked, “The Two-eyed Pirate,” actually signify twice the quality or only half? And, what about the weather report we’d heard in the taxi ride to the pier?

The boat pushed off at 7:30 a.m. It was slated for a six-hour cruise, twice as long as the one planned by Gilligan, the Skipper, and the five passengers that sailed that day. Our boat could handle many more passengers and much longer forays. There were numerous bars scattered around the main deck, a few small cabins available for rent, a small casino that opened as soon as the ship cleared the territorial limits of the U.S., a large dining room, snacking buffet, the requisite shuffle board area, a workout room, and plenty of barf bags conspicuously posted along the rails that lined the interior bulkheads.

If there’s one thing at which I am an expert, it is the early detection of rough seas. A long relationship with seasickness, much like in a marriage, tunes one into subtle signs that those with less experience foolishly miss. Imperceptiveness can bring with it dire circumstances. My father, an ex-Marine, frequently repeated the quip among leathernecks on board ship that the worst thing about seasickness is that you don’t die from it. A terrible bout in the North Sea while on our honeymoon cruise the year before had taught me that there is a shot that can clear your head but not your stomach and that, if you lie down with your head in between two pillows, much of the worst the ocean can deliver can be thwarted.

No more than an hour after Ft. Lauderdale faded into the morning gloom, the winds began to kick up. The boat rocked. Almost immediately, bells began ringing in my middle ear, and my intestines commenced cramping. Five minutes later, sensing that we had better move fast before they were all taken and with my wife completely on board, we rented a lower-deck cabin. A half-hour after that, while scores of teenagers cavorted on deck and many foolish adults sipped Bahama-mamas at the bars, we battened down our hatches in the safety of our rented retreat. I jammed my head between two pillows, turned on music I had brought along by the singer Seal, and watched in horror as our porthole alternately went dark and then light as the waves covered it and then receded.

Later, and growing braver, we sang the Gilligan’s Island theme song.

We tried to sleep, dozing on and off and listening to our walls being pounded by the ferocious sea which remained, thankfully, outside. Strange human noises on the inside terrified us even more. What were we hearing? Meanwhile, the ship rolled from side to side, the dresser drawers kept opening and closing, and the door of the bathroom medicine chest followed suit.

Then, we heard bodies tumbling in the hallway and the unmistakable sound of barf bags in use. Glass was breaking above us as bottles and stemware alternately slid from one end of the bars to the other, back again, and then, inevitably, onto the floor.

When we emerged from our hideout a few hours later, the decks were laden with people. Spilled food and drink littered the entire premises and a terrible smell triggered our gag reflexes. An alarming number of clearly audible pleas for mercy wafted to our ears from above, below, and all around us.

The engines slowed and the motion of the boat gentled. We hovered for what seemed to be the better part of an hour. Then, for no apparent reason, the engines increased their thrust, the ship turned 180 degrees and we plowed forward in earnest again. There was one problem — we were going the wrong way!

Later we learned that the ship had made it to within ten miles of Freeport when the captain was informed that the harbor was closed. No ships could leave and, because all births were full, none could enter. The Minnow was forced to reverse course, accelerate, and head back to Ft. Lauderdale. Thankfully, the winds had begun to abate, but not enough for us to do more than venture out of the cabin for a few minutes to witness the carnage in the halls and on deck and to beat a hasty retreat to our cabin before someone could pirate our hovel.

The six-hour cruise to heaven had turned into a 9-hour journey to Hell, with a stop in the middle of nowhere thrown in for good measure. Later that afternoon, the sun breaking out and the skies blue again, we limped back to the harbor at Ft. Lauderdale. The weather had settled sufficiently to afford us easy entrance to a berth.

Bedraggled passengers crept to the main deck, some from the depths of the ship and some from the depths of their despair. They formed lines at the exit stations, hoping for a quick egress and waited, and waited, and waited.

“What’s going on?” The din began to crescendo. “Why won’t they let us off?” The answer came slowly.

A few of us who happened to be standing near one of the less populated exits noticed a commotion off to our left. “What’s going on?” I echoed, pointing toward a bevy of sounds that, clearly, we were not intended to hear. Noises that we immediately interpreted as a ruckus made their way around the set of labyrinthine bulkheads that separated us from whatever was transpiring. Whatever it was, they clearly didn’t want us to know about it. Indeed, a rope barrier had been erected near our queue, preventing anyone from wandering to port from where we stood on the starboard side of the ship.

With strained ears and craned necks, we struggled to decipher the muffled noises and hushed voices we heard. “There’s something happening in that corridor over there.”

The secret was finally revealed. On most ships, there are usually a limited number of places from which one can safely disembark — especially if the goal is to land on a pier. The captain and crew had apparently been apprised of two things. First, a pair of unfortunate passengers had taken more battering during the trip than they could stand. Things had gone badly for them. Second, it would probably be best if the rest of us didn’t know about it until the very last minute.

The passengers in question, seasick, perhaps full of Bahama-mamas, and tossed about as the ship rocked and rolled, had apparently suffered heart attacks and died during our little adventure. A doctor on board had not been able to save them. Their bodies, covered by sheets, lay on stretchers available for medical emergencies. Crew members gingerly hoisted them off the ship and hurried the deceased into waiting ambulances.

A veil of darkness covered us as we watched their shrouded bodies carried away. Still unaware of the details, we thought, “Perhaps they couldn’t protect themselves from the battering; perhaps they had weak hearts to begin with; perhaps we should have given them our cabin.”

We disembarked. Now we had to worry about where we would stay. Shrugging off our guilt at being so quickly self-centered, we asked, “Now what? We have no place to go.”

Luckily, cruise representatives awaited our arrival, the captain having radioed ahead about the calamity that had befallen his ship and passengers. We were ushered to a waiting room and warmly greeted with good news. “We have accommodations for all of you, they announced. “Since your Bahamas trip has been cancelled, you will not be charged for your accommodations there and we will pay for your stay in Ft. Lauderdale until your flights back home.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “I wonder where they’ll put us up?” I stopped in my tracks, seized with the possibility of the irony that would crown all ironies. “You don’t think they’d take us to Camelot, do you?”

Bio: Anthony Candela has published a memoir, science-fiction novella, and an essay compilation. He continues to post essays on a variety of topics. In 2025, he self-published Fire On the Desert Sands, a romance-adventure-fantasy novel, with co-author, Julianna M. Kodis.

Anthony worked in the field of blindness and visual impairment for nearly 50 years. He is blind and an AFB Marriot Award recipient. His work has included promoting technology awareness and employment. He has a special interest in enhancing the development of blindness professionals. He is a “retired” athlete, loves movies, sports, reading, writing, and music, including dabbling in guitar.

---

Part IV. The Writers’ Climb

Poetry, poetry First Place
by Brad Corallo

This habit I have.
Trying to capture one stolen moment,
within a constellation of words and images.

I do this both for myself and
the illumination of beloved friends and fellow travelers.

When my efforts prove fruitful,
I am relieved.
When others connect,
I know gratitude and warmth.

Do these things mean
that I have crafted a “good poem?”
And why is such
so important to me?

This arcane process of distillation,
clarification and refinement.
An endeavor toward communion.
We are all so profoundly alone.

So, in an uncertain and confused world
we reach out,
hoping someone takes our hand
if only for one glorious, shining moment.

---

Recalibrating Gravity, book excerpt
by Mary Keating

On an unremarkable summer night at the age of fifteen, Mary Keating got into a 1965 Mustang convertible driven by a boy she barely knew. She never walked again.

Recalibrating Gravity, a memoir in verse, recounts a life interrupted by a spinal cord injury and later challenged by thyroid cancer, a broken femur, and third-degree burns. Through poetry, Keating shares wisdom honed from five decades as a wheelchair user, learning how to embrace life while navigating physical and societal barriers that often lead to isolation. She becomes a lifelong disability advocate, helping create an accessible and inclusive world. Her poetry shows us how her life blooms despite extraordinary challenges as she earns her Yale Law School degree, falls in love, and discovers the freedom of scuba diving.

More than a disability memoir, Recalibrating Gravity is infused with humor, love, and grace. It reminds us to embrace the complexities and messiness of life while recognizing disability as an integral part of being human.

This deeply personal collection speaks to teenagers coming of age, adults navigating the realities of aging, and anyone facing the challenge of redefining themselves.

********************

Broken Bits

My accident spun my family’s
life upside down—shook
the equilibrium of their globe
but they never let me know it
The middle child—the center of

Mom got the call
rushed to United Hospital
Face above mine she started running
through her children’s names
calling them out as always in order
of birth until she reached

The realization it was me
lying there and not another
took her a few minutes to

I was supposed to be safe
at my boyfriend’s house
with his mom and dad
Not lying in the ER unable
to move—in agony with

The doctors wouldn’t give
me any pain medication because
they feared I had a concussion
They must’ve never broken
their backs before because

The night is a blur
but a few bits linger
Time moving like a drunk
The nurses not allowing me
to have a watch or a clock
to figure out how fast or how

I’d borrowed my oldest sister’s outfit
that night—a silky dark-green top
that matched my eyes—madras pants
I begged the nurses not to cut them
as they weren’t mine and I’d promised

Barely bearing crushing pain

Unable to move or feel three quarters of

Whispers of how our one-ambulance
town should’ve taken me first
instead of the driver whose condition was

Mom finally convincing the doctors
to give me Demerol to try and stop

Drifting in and out of moments

Waking in the freezer of the ICU
my dad sitting next to the bed
his hand through the gap in the rails
holding mine—his other holding
the front page of The New York Times to show

His image, a smudge grouped in a line
of other smudges leaning hard to heel a hull
crewing a beauty of a sailboat
in the middle of an oceanic race
he left to be at my side

Telling him I wanted to know how fast
time was passing so he wrapped
his pocket watch around the bedrail
hands nearing 3:30 am and I realized

********************

Bride of Frankenstein

The unwieldy tilt table squeaks as the techs wheel it next to my hospital bed
gingerly transfer my prone body onto it—then strap me in

My PT smiles above me, asks if I’m ready while she angles the table upward
degree by degree into a standing position

But we never get farther than a few clicks on a protractor when blood
rushes out of my head to pool at my feet—go back to zero written on my face

She drops me to an x-axis then angles me head-down into negative space
Waits for my face to flush to inch me back into positive territory

We advance ten degrees by the end of our session
only after I trick my mind into believing I’m the star

of a horror movie playing the bride of a monster who just wants to be loved
indulging a director struggling to get the scene just to his liking

Forcing me to repeat in an endless loop what is otherwise unbearable

********************

Steps
An Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury

no one knew what my prognosis would be
I could be up and walking in no time
or only recover bits of function

Rehab became a waiting game buttressed
by Hope buttressed by a Higher Power
tools and steps of The Program, and my mom
who constantly quipped that at least I wasn’t
lying in the Black Hole of Calcutta

Once told the specialists hadn’t a clue
I stopped looking to them for my answers
Instead I endured on inspiration
from AA’s little black book and slogans
Chanted Let Go and Let God, Turn Your Life
Over, Don’t Project, One Day at a Time
A Buddhist in training occupying
a bed in Burke Rehabilitation

My mom stopped drinking just in time to coach
her daughter how to walk different steps
through a life of unexpected hardness
I’d no idea what the Black Hole was but
I would never slip into its darkness

********************

Independence Checkup

A bee gets into my parents’ bonnet
stings me into going back to rehab
for a checkup before going to college
I resist but they persist

They send me to Rusk in NYC
reputed to be the best
It’s summertime and the last
place on earth I want to be

I’m in a wardroom with four
other paras—all newbies but me
I’m independent now—imprisoned
by parental good intentions for a week

A guy on a self-propelled stretcher
invites me up to the rooftop
where he’s the goalie along with
another guy healing a backside bedsore

We ride up the elevator
Doors open to clouds of reefer
A group of guys in chairs
slam a puck with hockey sticks

The goalposts lie between the front
wheels of two stretchers with guys
lying stomach down—someone asks me
if I want a hit—I hesitate—then pass

A cute guy starts flirting with me
Asks why I’m there as he pops a wheelie
Parents satisfies his curiosity
but not before he gets the hots for me

He’s a city boy from Rockaway
a world away from my hometown
but only an hour down the highway
Tries to kiss me going down the elevator

By the end of the week he climbs
into my bed late one night
In the morning the nurse flicks
open the privacy curtains—gasps

Sprung from rehab, we visit a few times
He picks me up in his extra-large coupe
My girlfriend comes along with me
Puts my wheelchair in the trunk

His is pinned behind the back seat
the three of us jammed into the front
He whips around a corner onto a busy
road and the passenger door flies open

My friend ejects, head mashing the pavement
Chairs unreachable —we’re stuck—
stung by momentary helplessness
Time slows to match her stillness

until she snaps up—laughs and hops
back in—but not back to the same me

********************

Passing Time

—0—

Wiggle your toes.
Such an easy act before.
Who would have thought
hours ago
a long, lean, lithe girl
of 15
would have broken so easily.

Well maybe not so easily.
Was it 110 or 120—
whatever the maximum speed
a Mustang could be pushed
when the pedal hit the floor?

Despite her screams
he insisted on showing
just how fast
his baby could go.
He just a boy of 16.

It did go very fast
until an oak,
tall and lean
got in the way.

Maybe he got his wish.
Just before he died
he did break
the speedometer.

—∞—

I know that love of speed—
the way my hair flies
behind me
when racing downhill

How much faster I’d
be dressed
if I let an aide help me.

How much faster I’d
transfer from wheelchair
to shower chair—
from chair to bed—
if my legs let me stand.

But hell—
I can’t even
coax my toes to move.

0—∞

With my new van.
I’ve picked up at least
10 minutes
each way
driving right from
my wheelchair.

I still haven’t figured out
the speed of time
50 years after
the accident
crushed T3,T4,T5.

Marking milestones,
when daily tasks seem
to slow me down to zero
while years pass
at the speed of light,
helps me remember:

Graduating law school
Falling In love
Passing the bar
Learning to scuba
Getting married
Cheating cancer.

I don’t know when
my journey ends
or how fast I’ll get there.

I think my speedometer
is broken.

Note: to listen to an interview with Mary and to hear her read some of her poems, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BdiIS2j1Ng.

Bio: Mary Keating, a Yale Law School graduate, poet, and disability rights advocate, is the author of the memoir in verse Recalibrating Gravity, the first poetry collection to win the When Words Count Competition. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she won third place in the Poetry Society of Indiana Award in the 2026 NFSPS Annual Contest.
Keating’s poems appear in literary journals and anthologies, including The Fiddlehead, Rattle, and ONE ART. She is the Poetry Editor of ScribesMICRO and shares her story on podcasts, radio talk shows, and at community programs. She lives in CT with her husband, Dan.

---

Advertisement:

FROM IDEA TO EDIT https://forms.gardenofneuro.org/nx/portal/neonevents/events?path=%2Fportal%2Fevents%2F31376

Find Your Voice. Finish Your Piece. From Idea to Edit is a six-week writing class taught by writer and speaker Elle Becker. It’s designed to help you turn that chaotic spark into a finished piece you’re genuinely proud of. Through live sessions, feedback, and a jam-packed curriculum, you’ll learn to explore your writing voice, quiet your inner critic, strengthen your editing skills, and more. An engaging, judgment-free, neurodivergent-friendly environment.

Only $100. Sliding scale available.

Winter 2026 cohort begins November 8. Registration for 2027 opens soon.

Learn more at ellebeckerauthor.com

or register at Garden of Neuro.

---

A Feathered Prayer for Poets, poetry
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

With the gentle touch
of a floating periwinkle feather,
God bless the poets
who open their souls
on pages and manuscripts,
who use their hearts like feathered plumes
to write vivid, velvet verses
for readers wanting only a measured dose of craft.

God bless the hands that shape this craft:
let their hands always be strong
to write, type, and/or braille
the stanzas, opinions, poems
of all stages of life–
through a rainbow of emotions,
deep wells of challenge,
the pampered and plush seasons of life.

God bless the poets
and grant them patience
to await publication,
kudos, honors, congratulations,
or just quiet praise.
Let them be open
to hear all that a critic has to offer;
then, give each poet the diligence
to be wise
about what to revise,
what to keep.

God bless the poet’s mind
with clarity, creativity,
wit, humor, understanding, and grace.
Grant each poet a good memory
with perspective and empathy.
Allow each poet to overflow
with sparkling ideas.

Additionally, please bless every poet
with gratitude for talent,
gracious acceptance of compliments,
sincere humility, and
more than a modicum of modesty.

Then, dear Lord, let these poets
help lead
a world of art and artistry
to avoid
a world of wars–
even a war of words.

Saint David, patron saint of poets,
bless each poet’s computer and saved files;
and please watch over all poets
throughout their poetic seasons on this diversified Earth.

An earlier version of “A Feathered Prayer for Poets” was published on Alice’s Wordwalk blog in 2017.

Bio: Holder of poetry pom-poms, author of The Christmas Carriage and Other Writings of the Holiday Season, creator of the poster “A Guide Dog’s Prayer to Saint Francis of Assisi,” retired (full-time) college instructor of English, weekly blogger since 2013, advocate for National Poetry Month, avid container gardener, believer in preserving family history, a Hoosier-at-heart who has resided in Wisconsin since 1991, handler of four magnificent Leader Dogs over thirty-six years-all of these shape the petals of the blossoming, poetic life of Alice Jane-Marie Massa. To read more of Alice’s writings, visit her blog and author’s web page: https://alice13wordwalk.wordpress.com https://www.dldbooks.com/alicemassa/

---

Catching Z’s, book review
by Lisa Busch

If catching your Z’s is as hard as catching a baseball from the stands at PNC park, you might want to keep reading—not just this article, but a book available on Bookshare, Audible and Libby by the journalist, Kim Jones, entitled: Trick Yourself to Sleep: 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber.

Though it’s tempting, I don’t plan to list all 222 suggestions here but instead clue you in on a few of the possibilities.

The book focuses on two main factors that can interfere with slumber: anxiety and lifestyle habits. Relaxation exercises, breathing techniques, meditation, mindfulness, herbal teas, and essential oils are familiar ideas that can help calm a tense body and unwanted thoughts.

But have you ever tried these tricks? Singing yourself a lullaby? Listening to the sound of frogs or a washing machine? Hugging someone or yourself? Using walnuts as a source of melatonin? Abstaining from naps, caffeine and spicy meals after 2 pm? Lying on your left side to avoid acid reflux? Folding towels or brushing your hair which slows your heart rate? Saying to your worry: “Thank you for popping in to my mind. I can’t do anything about you at the moment so I’ll deal with you tomorrow?” Letting your mind meander where it will?

Of course I could go on and on, mentioning the writer’s insistence to stay away from phone, computer, and television for 2 to 3 hours before bed, because screen light suppresses the production of melatonin. Or I could give you more of her advice about keeping a sleep journal so you can find out what works for you and what doesn’t.

But one of the best parts of self improvement is to make your own discoveries.

In short, I believe it’s worth your effort to read this book—not only for its wealth of material but because the author often mentions studies done by professionals that support the truth of each suggestion.

However, read the book quickly, and you will undoubtedly spend whole nights in a frenzy. But if you take your time, you probably will fall asleep—either because you’ve found good solutions to your insomnia or boredom conquers your wakefulness. Either way, how can you lose?

“Catching Z’s” was Previously published in the PCB Advocate.

---

Celebrating Success: Behind Our Eyes: A Cinquain, poetry
by Marilyn Brandt Smith

Twenty
Years of strong growth,
Networking to reach goals,
Highlighting creativity
And skills.

We have
Opened windows,
Offered recognition;
Writers with disabilities
Can shine.

Bio: Marilyn Brandt Smith worked as a teacher, psychologist, and rehabilitation professional. She has edited magazines and newsletters since 1976, and was the first blind Peace Corps volunteer. She lives with her family in rural Kentucky. Her first book, Chasing the Green Sun, published in 2012, is available from Amazon and other bookstores and in audio form. She loves writing flash fiction stories, and was the primary editor for the first Behind Our Eyes anthology, as well as Magnets and Ladders from 2011 through 2013. She enjoys college basketball, barbershop harmony, and adventure books. Visit her website: http://www.marilynspages.com.

---

Donation Request

Do you enjoy reading Magnets and Ladders? Consider making a donation to Behind Our Eyes, a 501C3 nonprofit organization of writers with disabilities. Behind Our Eyes provides funding to support all Magnets and Ladders activities and all Magnets and Ladders editorial and technical staff members are Behind Our Eyes Members.

You may make a contribution using the PayPal button on our website https://www.behindoureyes.org.

---

Finish the Story, writing exercise
by Marilyn Brandt Smith

Julie wasn’t expecting a visit from her sister, but here she was at her front door. “What in the world!” she squealed. “Did you fly, or are you driving?” They hugged.

“I had to come to Chicago for a work conference, and you’re just a skip up the road,” she said.

Julie did some quick math. Ninety-one miles from Chicago to Milwaukee. Diane could do that in a couple of hours if there was no bad traffic in either city.

“I’m here on a mission,” Diane said softly.

“Let me get us a snack, or how about a sandwich? If I know you, you skipped a meal. The boys will be home from school soon, or we could go out.”

“Oh, a sandwich would be great.” Diane followed her to the kitchen and helped herself to a glass of water. She began looking through a tote she brought in with her.

“Ham, pimento cheese? There may be some salami left if Larry didn’t finish it last…“

“Ham sounds great. Are you having one too?”

“I will. Now that you mentioned it, we’re having frozen lasagna tonight, and I think a sandwich sounds better.”

Diane pulled a manila envelope out of her tote. “I need you to keep this for me for a while. I can’t have anyone find this at home. It’s kind of a big deal.”

Julie placed the sandwiches, chips, and drinks on the table. She slid a tray of lasagna into the oven and joined her sister. “This sounds mysterious,” she smiled. “Big plans for a surprise, I bet—a vacation for just you and him?”

“Well, yes, it will definitely be a surprise,” Diane laughed. “You can’t cheat and look because you’re part of it.”

“I thought it was for your family. Why would you bring it to me if I’m part of the surprise? I bet you need me to keep Nancy?”

“Well, you’re just part of it. Trust me on this, okay? It’s not illegal. Just call me the drama queen and run with it.”

“Oh silly girl, I know that,” Julie said, “but how long do I have to keep it. And let’s see, where would I put it to keep my family out? I think Larry might think we should know and sneak in if he knew it. Not even him? Really?”

“Julie, I’m serious. That can’t happen,” Diane answered without a smile in her voice or on her face.

Julie made small talk while she finished her sandwich. She picked up the envelope and took it into the master bedroom. “Come help me,” she called, “I can’t lift up this mattress by myself. They’re so heavy now that you can’t turn them over any more.”

“I need to get on the road,” Diane said as they walked back into the living room. “I played hooky on one session today to come up here. I’ll get the code from the lady I was rooming with. She’s in a different office, but she won’t tell. Sis kiss for the road? I wasn’t here today,” she whispered as they parted.

Julie wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing, and wondered why Diane had so many trust issues. Surely someone nearby at home could have kept her secret papers. She hated keeping secrets from Larry, but she knew he would think they needed to know what it was all about, and that would violate Diane’s trust. She’d just pretend it didn’t happen, and when Diane wanted it back, she’d send it to her.

After lasagna, Julie was surprised when Larry suggested they take their black lab Quincy for a walk. The boys had homework, and at nine and eleven, they were fine at home for a while.

It was Julie’s turn to toss the ball when Larry said, “Hey, I got a call from Phil today at work. He should have called you. I don’t know why he asked me if Diane had been here or was visiting. It seems she was supposed to be at a training seminar in Chicago and be home on Wednesday night. At first he assumed maybe she’d come up here, but when he tries to call her, all he gets is voicemail. I assured him we haven’t seen her. What do you think? He said the girl at her office said she’d probably just taken a couple of days off, but it’s Friday and now…“

“Where did Quincy go with that ball?” Julie dashed to the shrubbery. “It’s time to go home, boy!” she called. Julie knew she didn’t have a poker face, and Larry would see her fear and her anger. ‘Was Diane in big trouble somehow? Would she leave Nancy like this? Oh, why did you do this to me, Sis,’ Julie wondered.

Editor’s note: Marilyn has this story off to an amazing start, but what happens next? You have the opportunity to decide. Write your ending to this story and submit it for the Spring/Summer edition of Magnets and Ladders. We will publish Marilyn’s beginning and the top two endings in the writers’ climb. Get your creative juices flowing.

---

Living Vicariously in Wyoming: Stories, book excerpt
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

Synopsis:

As defined in the first story, living vicariously means living your life through someone else’s. You’re invited to live vicariously through the lives of the people in these stories. There’s the lawyer who catches his wife in the act with a nun. A college student identifies with a character in a play. A young woman loses her mother and finds her father. And a high school student’s prudish English teacher strenuously objects to a single word in her paper.

In Wyoming, as in any other state, people fall in love, and sometimes relationships are shattered. Accidents, domestic violence, prejudice, and crimes all occur. Lives are torn apart, and people are reunited. Ordinary people deal with everyday and not-so-everyday situations.

The 25 stories in this collection, most of which are set in Wyoming, are about how the various characters resolve their conflicts-or not.

Her Decision

After nine years of marriage, Tessa knew that the holidays were not a good time to ask her husband for a favor. But as she sat across from him in the living room on an evening in early December, she knew she had no choice. Their sons, Tyler, eight, and Josh, six, were asleep upstairs. Now was the time. She looked at Dan, stretched out in an armchair, his face buried in the newspaper.

She took a deep breath. “Honey, I’ve been thinking.”

“Hmm?” Dan didn’t bother to look up from the newspaper.

“Sweetie, you know Dad’s having open heart surgery the day after Christmas.”

Dan placed the newspaper on his lap and eyed her curiously. “You told me he has to go to Rochester, Minnesota, to the Mayo Clinic because the procedure is too dangerous for the hospital here in Sheridan or any of the hospitals in Billings or Denver to handle, right?”

“Yes,” Tessa answered. “We should be with him during this time.”

“What?” Dan’s eyebrows rose.

“I know the holidays are the busiest time for the bookstore, but couldn’t we take some time off and go to Rochester to be with him? We’ve never gone to visit Dad, not for Christmas, not anytime. We’ve always spent Christmas with your family. And sometimes in the summer, when Dad and Mom weren’t teaching summer school at the University of Wyoming, they’d drive up here from Laramie. Now that Mom’s gone, and I’m the only child, Dad has no one. He shouldn’t have to go through this alone.”

“Didn’t you say your dad had a brother in Colorado?”

“Yes, but like you, he’s too busy.” Tessa sighed.

“How long would we be gone?”

“Dad said he would be recuperating in the clinic for a couple of weeks. I should be with him during that time. You could stay a few days and then come back.”

“When would you want to leave?”

“Christmas morning. My friend Lorraine, who works at Trouble Free Travel, said that if we act fast, we can get tickets on a flight leaving first thing in the morning. She can give you a good deal on a round-trip ticket if you come back on the 28th. That should give you plenty of time to finish the monthly inventory. I’ll get a one-way ticket because I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. It will depend on when Dad will be released from the hospital and if he’ll be able to manage on his own at home.”

“You expect me to forfeit a few days of business? What about the boys? Have you thought about them?”

“Of course. I talked to your mother when I first found out about Dad’s surgery. She’s the one who suggested we take this trip. She said the boys could stay with her until you come back.”

“You know I can’t take time off during the holidays, Tessa, and I can’t spare you. This is one of the peak shopping times of the year. Both of us need to be there.”

“I know, but there are three weeks until Christmas. We’ll have plenty of time to hire someone on a temporary basis and train that person before we leave. If we get someone who’s responsible, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I suppose this was another one of Mom’s crazy ideas,” Dan said. “She has absolutely no business sense. This is just not going to work. I’ve never hired anyone to help, and I’m not going to start now.”

“Why not? We can afford it. We’ve made a lot of book sales over the years. We can hire someone, at least on a temporary basis, while we go to Minnesota.”

“That’s not possible. I’m not going to squander money on extra help when you and I can work in the store as we usually do.”

Close to tears, Tessa thought of another tactic. “What if, when we get to be Dad’s age, and I die before you do, and you have to have open heart surgery? Wouldn’t you want Tyler or Josh to be with you?”

“You’re as healthy as I am. The chance of you going before me is slim. Besides, I don’t drink or smoke like your dad does, and I eat right. I doubt I’ll need open heart surgery.”

Tessa could hold back the tears no longer. “We shouldn’t abandon Dad when he needs us just because his lifestyle doesn’t meet with your approval.” She jumped to her feet and hurried out of the room and up the stairs to their bedroom. She almost slammed the door, but remembering that the boys were asleep, she closed it quietly and flopped onto the bed, allowing her tears to flow. A moment later, the slamming of the garage door and the sound of the car speeding away told her that Dan had left the house in anger.…

Living Vicariously in Wyoming can be downloaded from BARD and Bookshare and purchased from Amazon, Smashwords, and other online retailers. Please visit: https://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com/wp/living-vicariously-in-wyoming/ for direct download and purchase links.

---

CONTEST ALERT

We will be holding contests in the areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for the Spring/Summer edition of Magnets and Ladders. All submissions will be entered into the contest. Cash prizes of $30 and $20 will be awarded to the first and second place winners.

Please note: Funds for contest prizes are provided by Behind Our Eyes. Checks for prize winning entries not cashed within 6 months of the issue date are void and considered a donation back to Behind Our Eyes. No additional payments will be made to replace the uncashed check. If you intend your prize winnings to be a donation, please let us know upon winning so we can send you a donation receipt letter.

Remember, the deadline for submissions is February 15, so be sure to get your entries in on time.

---

Evidence of Emotion, poetry
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

In the courtroom of the heart,
I offer you Exhibit A–
clear lenses of glasses
stained with teardrops.

Washing these unnecessarily prescription lenses
on this nearly frosted morning,
I think of the evidence of emotion,
the tear stains disappearing beneath
a cascade of water
and the touch of my finger.

Is the sadness of yesterday
now erased, forgotten, evaluated, or forestalled?

Back in the courtroom of the heart,
an unqualified judge asked,
“Why do you wear these glasses
if you have no vision?”

My testimony began:
“Since I was seven, I have been wearing glasses:
they seem as much a part of me
as my right hand and my left leg,
as the clothes I don each day.
Exhibit A has protected me
from hurt or greater injury
when I fell off my bike,
when a door was accidentally slung into my face,
when I encountered a piece of construction equipment on the Kilbourn Drawbridge.
Wearing these glasses
calms my concerns
about being poked by a low-hanging branch.
Through so many seasons of walking,
these glasses have shielded my broken eyes
from raindrops, snowflakes, stinging sleet, and drying winds.
Believe me, I do not wear them for vanity:
I let my congenitally impaired vanity dissolve decades ago.
Most of all, I wear these glasses
to catch the tears of emotions
so that I have proof that I did not squelch nor hide
all that I felt on any yesterday.
I will admit that I am not
an amateur holder of emotions:
I ascend from Italian descent;
I am a professional holder of emotions–
a poet who translates tear stains
into the adversities of verse,
the joy of enjambment,
and the strides of stanzas.”

Midst the murmurs magnifying in the courtroom,
the judge, with unknown poetic license,
tapped his gavel and bellowed,
“Poetic order in the court!”
An earlier version of “Evidence of Emotion” was published on Alice’s Wordwalk blog on October 26, 2016.

---

Part V. From a Different Perspective

Afterimage of a Working Life, poetry
by David Anson Lee

There are days now
when usefulness feels like memory
still warming the surface of things.
Not absence,
but afterimage.
The shape of effort remains
even when task is gone.
I wake without urgency.
The body does not protest;
it continues its older agreements
with gravity, light, breath.
Once, everything meant direction.
Now it means continuity.
Even sound, what remains of it:
no longer arrives as instruction.
It arrives as residue
of a world that has moved on
from needing interpretation.
I do not rebuild myself.
I do not repair anything.
I notice what persists
without asking permission.
A hand resting on a table
is still a kind of history.
A room after speech
is not empty.
It is finished
without conclusion.

---

Prescription, poetry Honorable Mention
by Carolyn Martin

When the neurologist said, “Take more naps,”
I scoffed. I can relax my brain, I thought,
with National Geographic and Time,
not to mention binging The Morning Show,
Hot in Cleveland, Glee, and The Sopranos.
But then I remembered last night’s dreams:
running through an airport to catch a flight.
Strutting a keynote on a conference stage.
Strolling my yard to praise Spring’s surprise.
Feeling love in my cat’s purring eyes.
Sleeping any time of day or night frees
me from the reality of wheelchairs,
ankle swells, contracted toes, and weak body.
Thanks to a doctor’s sage advice, napping
is now a promising activity.

Bio: From New Jersey English teacher to international business trainer; from work addict to devotee of the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards,” Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired—and resting—in Clackamas, Oregon. Although she suffered a debilitating stroke in August, 2025, she is thrilled she still has the ability to write. Her sixth collection, Splitting Open the World, was released in March 2025 by The Poetry Box and her third chapbook, Metrophobia, by Lingua Ink Press in August 2025. For more see: http://www.carolynmartinpoet.com/.

---

Albinism, poetry
by Pankaj Khemka

In my next life,
my parents won’t lie awake
mapping the theft of their chocolate dreams
by a great white ghost,

won’t worry about an unaccepting world
spitting me out like gristle,
won’t wonder where I might find
a kind heart, a soft bed, a tribe of my own.

In my next life,
on my preschool playground, I won’t be
the abominable snowman –
I’ll be just another grain of sand

in childhood’s sandbox.
I won’t be the final body chosen
when choosing sides
for basketball – I’ll be part of the team.

Women won’t accuse me of lying about my age.
They’ll wink at me from across the room –
I’ll know the warmth of being held close.
In my next life,

I won’t be the missing chair at the table,
the name left off the guest list–
I’ll be part of the in crowd.

In my next life,
I won’t be on my knees, praying
that I’ll soon be moving on,
to my next life.

Bio: Pankaj Khemka is a poet born with albinism, a condition that shaped his early experience of visibility, otherness, and belonging. His work draws on family, identity, illness, and love, and appears in his collection-in-progress, Any Pain, Any Scarring? He lives in the United States.

---

Another Part of the House, fiction
by Zachary Pietrafetta

Jackson woke up. He heard a knock at his door. His au pair Aricella whispered with a question, “Mister Jackson, good morning. Your breakfast, sir?” “I’ll be down soon,” Jackson mumbled with his face pressed into his pillow. Aricella was his 12th au pair in 12 years. No one was good enough, according to Caroline, Jackson’s mother, who was too preoccupied with her own wealth and social status to mother Jackson but was always capable of controlling and manipulating and ultimately firing her au pairs.

Jackson sat at the breakfast table. “Jackson, Aricella will drop you off at school and pick you up to take you to your violin lessons, then your tennis lesson, and then to your tutors,” Caroline said as she walked out the door. Barton, Jackson’s father, read his email on his phone, immersed in his own thoughts.

I wish my father spent more time with me than he did with his phone. After all, I am first born. His male heir. But there is also…Timothy.

Timothy wasn’t at the breakfast table. Instead, he was in the west wing of the house with his nannies. He was not what Caroline and Barton wanted; he was an outsider, the other Merchant brother who didn’t belong. 12-year-old Jackson was ambivalent: he knew Timothy caused his family shame, that Timothy was something to be hidden, but he was still curious about Timothy’s perspective. How does he see us? Jackson would wonder whenever he saw his brother at the other end of a long hallway. Jackson would only see glimpses of him being dragged around firmly by the hands of his nannies.

That morning at the breakfast table, Jackson, who had been reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in school, broke the silence. He suddenly thought out loud, mumbling in a soft-spoken, timid tone, “Timothy is Boo Radley.”

His father looked up sternly from his phone, “And who, exactly, is Boo Radley?”

Jackson, anxious that he would now have to explain himself, managed to say the following words: “Radley is misunderstood. There’s something wrong with him, but he’s not bad.”

“And how is that like Timothy, exactly?” inquired his father.

Jackson stammered, “Timothy is an outsider in our own home.”

“Jackson, you’ve got the wrong idea about him,” Barton yelled impatiently. “Timothy is emotionless and antisocial. He’s autistic.” Barton then burst out with a series of hateful words that Jackson would never forget, “Timothy is too dangerous to society. He’s too aggressive, violent, and he needs to be kept in another part of the house.” Barton’s words shot straight through Jackson’s heart, hardening it.

Timothy is a dangerous person. I will make myself different.

Jackson did become something different. By age 16, he had grown stoic and emotionless, repressing all of his vulnerabilities under a ferocious heart. Every morning, Jackson walked to the front door to meet his driver; along the way, he would see his brother Timothy down the hallway. He would avoid looking at him. He would mumble to himself, “Timothy is dangerous.” Jackson’s chauffeur drove him to Alderton, a private high school that was a playground for the wealthy elites.

At Jackson’s school, his history teacher Mrs. Sheerbourn explained to the class that March was disability month. She then lectured on the history of disability rights. Jackson listened as she explained, “In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society forever expanded both services available to those with disabilities and the definitions of disabilities through the Social Security Amendments of 1965. On July 30, 1965, President Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments (Medicare and Medicaid Acts) into law. Medicare became an established health insurance program for the elderly, including disabled elderly. Medicaid was established as a health insurance program for people with limited income, also including disabled individuals with limited income. The impact of President Johnson’s reforms were extensive: by the end of his term, 2.3 million people were receiving monthly Social Security benefits, totaling over 2.5 billion dollars a year.”

Jackson felt his temperature rise, and he interrupted in a condescending tone, “How is that possible—why waste so much money on people who cannot contribute to society?”

Mrs. Sheerbourn was shocked, and she replied, “Excuse me, Jackson, do you really think disabled people are useless to society?”

“Mrs. Sheerbourn,” Jackson replied coldly, echoing years of his father’s breakfast table complaints, “If you can’t contribute to capitalism and profit, then get out.”

Mrs. Sheerbourn, visibly shocked, went back to her lesson.

Later that day in the cafeteria, as Jackson stood in line getting his lunch, he heard a voice behind him. “Jackson, I heard what you said in class today, and I resent it,” said an awkward boy whom Jackson had never noticed. “You probably don’t even know I exist, but my name is Marcus, and I’m on the autism spectrum.”

Jackson looked at Marcus. He studied him closely. To Jackson’s eye, Marcus was a thin, short, bespectacled, nerdy black kid who wouldn’t look him directly in the eye. “Excuse me?” Jackson said in an offended tone. “Why should I care that you’re on the spectrum?” Jackson asked, visibly annoyed by Marcus’s intrusion.

“Because what Ms. Sheerbourn was saying today is that people like me have a voice and a history.”

“Well,” Jackson retorted as he grabbed his food and stormed off, “Your voice and your history don’t drive our society forward.”

A week later, Jackson walked into history class. Ms. Sheerbourn broke up the class into teams of two and assigned various history research projects. Jackson found himself paired with Marcus.

“Why don’t we just work by ourselves?” Jackson said, turning his back to Marcus dismissively.

Their topic was a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. “But if Not.” Jackson opened his computer and began to search it. Before he could type in the title, Marcus blurted out the first few lines of the speech. “But if Not. There was a day when many of the Israelites found themselves in bondage and Babylon; there was a king of Babylon by the name of Nebuchadnezzar.”

Jackson’s jaw dropped as he listened; then, he asked aggressively, “What are you even talking about, you weirdo?”

Marcus kept on, “You read about him a great deal in the book of Daniel, and it stands as an epic that will remain stenciled on the mental sheets of unfolding generations. Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty king, and when he ruled, he ruled, and when he issued an order he meant business. And Nebuchadnezzar issued an order, his order was that everybody under the reign of his kingship had to bow before that golden image and worship it.”

Jackson glanced at his computer, scanning the words of the King speech. Every word verbatim was coming out of Marcus’s mouth, as Marcus stared up and to the right as if seeing the words on the ceiling.

Jackson was dumbstruck. How could his brain do that?

“How long have you known this speech?” Jackson whispered uncomfortably.

Marcus explained, “When I was six I became very interested in Civil Rights, and I memorized every King speech.”

“Is that easy for you?” Jackson asked curiously.

“Yes, I have an eidetic memory,” said Marcus in a matter of fact manner.

Jackson paused, struck by Marcus. Could he be this intelligent?

Jackson asked Marcus “What happens in the story?”

Marcus explained “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused Nebuchadnezzar and refused to worship the false idol, and so Nebuchadnezzar put them into a fiery furnace. Miraculously, God appeared right before them, and he saved them from the fiery furnace.”

Jackson asked “What is this story even about?”

Marcus paused, walked around, and glanced up at the ceiling and then erupted like a volcano, “This speech is about defying corrupt authoritarianism and having the youth find their own voice who have been oppressed by dictating stone-hearted cruel authoritative adults who want to abuse their power.”

Jackson thought to himself “What about Timothy?”

For the next two weeks, Jackson and Marcus worked together on the “But if Not” speech. They put together a multi-media presentation-Marcus’s voice reading the speech played over strong visual images of pictures and text. Images of the Biblical Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Images of Civil Rights marches. Then, Jackson’s words interrupted Marcus’s with commentary: “King used this Biblical story to argue that people should stand up for what is right, even if they are uncertain that they will succeed, even if they are unsure that God will save them.” These words were hard for Jackson to say, but after weeks of working with Marcus, he finally could let them out. Then, a series of slides read by Marcus:

“Courage in the face of adversity – standing up against injustice despite risks.

“Faith and hope – trusting in God and the possibility of a better future.

“Perseverance – continuing the struggle for civil rights even when progress is slow.

“Moral integrity – refusing to compromise on what is right.”

And then on the last slide, both Jackson and Marcus read together. And when listening to this line in class, Jackson actually broke.

“Love and service to others – judging a person’s life by how they helped others rather than by wealth or status.”

Jackson felt tears welling up in his eyes.

Love and service to others?

I wonder what my father would think about this. This is the opposite of his worldview.

Jackson’s mind wandered to Timothy.

What kind of intelligence does Timothy have stuck hidden underneath; what lay upon the inside of him?

Right after class, the two boys walked side by side: a rich neurotypical white boy and a poor neurodivergent black boy just chatting.

“Marcus, you have a keen memory for history. I must say I’m quite impressed by you and perplexed by how your mind works!”

“Thanks, Jackson, but why are you being so nice to me now?”

“Well, because I now can see your greatness,” Jackson said with a growing smile.

Then, unexpectedly some of Jackson’s arrogant popular friends cut off Marcus by budging in front of him, elbowing him out. “Oh, Jackson, you wanna be friends with that freak of a guy now?” said one of Jackson’s arrogant jock friends named Garth. “Remember where you belong,” warned another boy named Steve who was on the football team.

The next morning at breakfast, Jackson was greeted by the judgmental gaze of Barton.

Barton looked at Jackson for a while and then said, “I was at the country club, and you know what the conversation was about?”

“What?” Jackson asked.

“Are you really so foolish to have made friends with someone like that?”

Jackson felt confused, scared. Barton yelled, “Jackson, I expect you to know where you belong.” Jackson, ashamed, ran up to his room and slammed the door behind him and started to cry.

No, father, you have taught me the wrong way.

Jackson knew it was time to go meet his driver as he typically did. However, he felt compelled, pulled, drawn to something deep inside him.

I have to find Timothy.

He had never been to Timothy’s room. He had never even talked to Timothy. It hit him hard that he didn’t even know where his own brother slept.

He searched all around the mansion to find where his bedroom was. As he went from hallway to hallway, he was afraid that Barton or Caroline would find him. Nervous and anxious, he tried every door handle and explored every hallway, like a maze of infinite vast possibilities of who Timothy could be. After what had seemed as if a full hour had gone by, he eventually found something at the end of a long mysterious dark hallway. There was a sign on the front door that said “Timothy,” written in childish blue and green crayons. Jackson then knocked on the door. No response. So, he slowly opened it.

Inside the room, a boy with his back turned to him was watching a Pixar movie, Finding Nemo. As Nemo raced back and forth, running from the shark, the boy stimmed his hands, rocked back and forth, and yelled, “weeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Jackson, seeing the boy excited, became more curious.

I wonder if he’s my brother?

Jackson stammered for a second: “Timothy, it’s me…Jackson!” Timothy from the back was short, skinny, and blonde haired. Timothy slowly turned around while holding up a device, a touch chat HD where he typed all symbols of speech: “Jackson, I know you,” the device echoed.

Jackson was shocked.

How could he know me?

“Timothy,” Jackson said, “You really have known me all these years?”

Timothy typed on his device saying: “Yes, I’ve watched you your whole life.

Jackson remembered Barton’s words:

“Timothy is too dangerous to society. He’s too aggressive, violent, and he needs to be kept in another part of the house.”

Jackson’s heart softened.

Jackson’s eyes scanned everywhere around Timothy’s room: stuffed animals inspired by Disney Pixar movies, Koosh toys and fidgets, and-shocking Jackson most of all-childish drawings that showed a family of 4—a father, a mother, and two sons. “Is that us, Timothy?”

Timothy typed back on his machine “Yes, that’s the family that I want,” his machine echoed robotically. Despite the robotic voice, Jackson was moved, moved deeply.

All of a sudden, Jackson started to weep. “I’m so sorry, Timothy,” said Jackson, weeping furiously. Timothy then put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder and typed, “Not your fault.”

The next morning, Jackson’s parents Caroline and Barton walked down to the breakfast table only to find Timothy sitting there with Jackson. Caroline gasped, and Barton’s eyes flashed with outrage.

Timothy typed on his device. “Love and service to others – judging a person’s life by how they helped others rather than by wealth or status,” the robotic voice echoed.

Note: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous sermon from November, 1967 “But if Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church is based on the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3:16-18.

Bio: Zachary Pietrafetta was born at 23 weeks, six days gestational age, under two pounds, and spent 198 days in the NICU. Doctors have diagnosed him with many labels: autistic, ADHD, CP, etc. These labels can be both helpful and hurtful. In his writing, Zach builds worlds with characters who refuse to be limited by labels, neurodivergent heroes who help change the world by working toward a utopian ideal. He is working on a novel, Erasing Time. “Another Part of the House” explores part of the backstory of one of the main characters, Jackson Merchant.

Zach has had fiction published in Wordgathering, Kaleidoscope, and in Breath and Shadow.

---

The Art of Holding Still, poetry
by Pankaj Khemka

Summer vacation at our family home
in Nagpur. I am fifteen.
Three generations under the same roof.

A humid night
and my uncle away on business.
His young wife doesn’t want to sleep

alone in their basement bedroom.
Tonight she sleeps in the middle room,
on the same bed as me,

under mosquito netting.
Somewhere in the predawn hours
she drapes one bare leg over my thigh.

Am I supposed to reciprocate
or somehow extricate myself?
Not knowing

if she is only feigning sleep,
I become an undetonated bomb.

---

Enervation, poetry
by Nil F. Kıncak

I wake up and, it’s right here, watching me from my bedside.
Enmeshment. On a scale from one to ten it is undefined.
Everywhere. It is in the eggs I scramble for breakfast
and the bright red bowl of cat food I need to fill.
I’m out of clean socks, so today is laundry day.
It is in my chore chart, wearing the flimsy
disguise of boredom and laziness.
All this stealth and sleaziness
is wearing me down.
Not even halfway done
with my day or to do list.
And now I’m pissed.
I catch glimpses of it
under my slippers.
Its smudged on my
bathroom mirrors,
on my toothbrush
and my toothpaste.
More than an ache.
Bottle of analgesics;
I bet it’s in there too.
I’m scared to look
inside, for fear
of being right.
It herds me to bed
and tucks me in.
And guess who
is there to
greet me?
Pain.

Bio: Nil F. Kıncak (she/her) is a 25-year-old Turkish-American engineer, dance teacher, and poet based in Virginia. Her work has appeared in Magnets and Ladders, The Bipolar Poetry Journal, Dyonyzine Magazine, and Mosaic Art & Literary Journal. She received an Honorable Mentions in the 2018 and 2019 Jane Page Writing Contests. Nil is also the proud founder and facilitator of a workplace book club highlighting books by underrepresented authors. Nil was diagnosed with ADHD when she was nineteen and Bipolar 2 & OCD a few years later. She lives with endometriosis, a chronic and painful gynecological disorder.

---

Into My Universes, creative nonfiction
by Billy the Parrot (AKA Anthony R. Candela)

I have been in my current universe for more than 30 years, this at least according to the woman who has been my mother almost since my first memory. One day I looked up to see her outside my cage, bigger than life and so beautiful and warm. Since I never met my real mother and father, I did what Mother Nature commanded; then and there, I imprinted on the human before me. I was so strongly attached to her that once I went so far as to escape my cage and chase her by walking on the floor, because I never did learn to fly, following her all around the Veterinary Center. This is where I lived until she brought me home.

My cage has been my castle for the majority of my life. It is the only place I’ve ever known, other than inside my egg and for a day or so, an incubator. I’ve lived sometimes with pet dogs around and lately a boyfriend, but my mother’s and my time together has been constant and idyllic. In short, I have been a happy bird.

When I first emerged into awareness, I found myself inside a universe where sounds were muffled and the yellow-white substance that surrounded my body seemed to soak directly into me. It nourished me and made me feel strong, safe, and whole. I knew I was destined to encounter new and fascinating things because of what I could hear outside my universe. I didn’t know exactly where the new experiences would come from, but somehow I believed they were out there.

The porousness of my shell permitted pinhole slivers of air to enter my universe, providing life-giving oxygen. It also allowed sounds from outside to reach my ears. These clues suggested to me that I try to get to whatever it was beyond the protective shield my calcium-based encasement provided. But how to get out of my shell?

While I waited for my beak to be strong enough to peck my way out, I bided my time, going about the business of growing larger, stronger, and harder. I felt my wings, but I couldn’t do anything with them. Nonetheless, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I escaped my first universe. I can’t recall if I wondered what the next one would be like, but I do recall the compulsion to find out.

The incubator that kept my egg warm and safe was at best only an artificial substitute for my real mother and father. Although I still don’t know what happened to them, I know they would have kept me warm and protected me. With their help and encouragement, I would have popped into the world and they would have fed me until it was time to spread my wings and leave the nest.

Soon, my beak was hard enough for me to break a hole in my shell wide enough to clamber through. Strange sounds seemed to encourage me. The vocalizations were neither chirps nor songs; perhaps they were tweets? Whatever they were, they were compelling. I scrambled toward them, more animated than I’d ever been. Strange things, I think they call them hands, gently grasped me, holding my wings closed and warming me with an internal radiance I could not fathom. The sounds were soothing and the gentle strokes their fingers imparted caused surges throughout my body.

Somehow, the words they were saying seemed familiar. It was as if there were pieces of them or perhaps an ocean of them inside my brain. Was I pre-programmed to understand them? Was I predestined to make similar utterances myself?

My new mother said, “You are the most beautiful African Grey parrot I’ve ever seen. Your species is endangered, so I’m going to keep you for my own. Your name is Billy.”

Thus, I left the incubator, my second universe, and entered the one in which I still live. It’s a nice cage with perches, a bell to ring which I often overdo and drive my mother crazy, and, of course, my beloved water and food dishes. My mother talks to me all the time and I have learned to imitate her. Her loving hands replenish my water and food, clean my cage, and reach in at bedtime to stroke my belly. She covers my cage so I can sleep at night. I’ve learned to call her at sunrise, too early in the morning for her, with a plaintiff “Oh là là.” Then she unveils me and the day begins. I love all these things so much. I get to tweet, chirp, call, and occasionally sing. I pluck old feathers making way for new ones to grow. I preen as if I am a movie star which, according to my mother, is exactly what I am. My human friends respond to me, occasionally trying in vain to imitate me, but not doing as well as I do when I imitate them. They tease my mother when I call out, “Be careful,” or “Billy-love,” my mother’s pet name for me.

My universe is safe and stable. This is the way it should be. I couldn’t imagine another. I am indeed a happy bird.

---

Climate Change Blues, nonfiction
by John Cronin

Early Wednesday morning, on my way to the bathroom, I asked Gillian, “Is something burning? Smells like an electrical fire.”

After looking around, Gillian reported, “I found no problems. However, I do smell something burning. I wonder what it is.”

Not giving the smell a second thought, we returned to our beds. 5:30 was too early to remain up. Getting up about 8:00, as usual, I asked Gillian how it looked outside.

“I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s murky. It’s swirling around like fog, only black. No bright yellow sun. All there is, is a pale orange orb where the sun should be.”

“Is the end of the world on the way? I still smell smoke.”

In the kitchen while eating breakfast, the news woman on the radio told everyone to keep their windows closed because of the wildfire smoke. There were one hundred and eighty forest fires in Northern Ontario, and the wind was blowing in the right direction to cover southern Ontario with smoke. Radio announcers encouraged people with breathing problems, like myself, to stay inside with windows locked. Just being outside, breathing in the smoke was the equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes. Later, I read that Southern Ontario had the dubious honour of having the worst air quality in the world.

Even with the windows closed, I could not escape the toxic brew. All day, except to eat and use the bathroom, I used the BiPAP machine. It helped me breathe and filtered out some of the smoke.

That was Wednesday. The same thing on Thursday. If anything, it was becoming murkier. When outside, Gillian said there was an oily feel to the smoke. By Friday Gillian could see a faint yellowish orange sun. However, I still smelled smoke, with all the windows closed, but not as intense.

Every day we prayed for rain to help quench the wildfires. At least some moisture to wash out the smoke. Early Saturday morning, our prayers came true. The heavens opened. For hours a torrential downpour pounded us. Rain drops bounced off the windows. The din created by the rain banging against the metal roof, stopped any hopes Gillian harboured for returning to sleep. The storm continued into the late morning, when it turned to drizzle.

“How does it look outside?” I asked.

“Puddles in Larry’s bean field, but the plants are not damaged. And best of all no smoke. When the clouds clear, we’ll have sun again. We can open windows and you can breathe.”

“Great, but I’m still worried. This is going to happen again. If not this year, next year, and for years after, until I’m in the ground. Climate change is here to stay. Governments pay lip service to decarbonization, but when push comes to shove, they shove the oil at us. Canada was moving in the correct direction, but because of world circumstances our leadership decided to put decarbonization on hold. “Let’s pump oil.”

“There’s nothing you can do, John. Don’t stress yourself, it makes your breathing worse. There is nothing more we can do as individuals. I buy whole food. We only buy necessities. We don’t drive far or take vacations.”

“You’re right. Stop stressing and get on with living.”

Bio: At sixty- nine, John spends most of his time reading, writing and visiting with friends. In his childhood, he contracted polio, leaving him a paraplegic. Later he attended the University of Waterloo where he obtained a B.A. in philosophy and political science, and an M.A. in philosophy. While working on his PhD John’s vision finally deteriorated to where he was legally blind due to retinitis pigmentosa. Unable to continue his studies, John decided to travel. He resided in Texas, later living in Jamaica. While in Jamaica, he met and married Gillian White. They now reside on an acre in rural Ontario, not far from Lake Huron.

---

Dominos Down, six sentence quatrain, poetry
by Marlene Mesot

On a card table
Just to have some fun
Watch dominos fall
Lined up one by one.

One corner touching
Like an open book
Tall in staggered row
In shape of S hook.

Opposite corners
Standing tall on end
Domino effect
Makes them fall again.

As S row topples
Waving down the line
Watch each one flatten
Synchronized in time.

Moods swing like sharp curves
No warning turning
Standing tall then down
Past future yearning.

Life’s plans don’t align
All in a neat row
Sometimes the S curves
Are hard rows to hoe.

Bio: Independent author Marlene Mesot’s contemporary fiction and poetry entangle heart felt struggles with mystery and faith. She shares her 4 Elements of Mystery series heroine’s disabilities of partial deaf blindness due to nerve damage at premature birth. Marlene has loved writing since early childhood.

Visit her website at: http://www.marlsmenagerie.com

---

Time Shift, poetry
by Rochelle M. Anderson

Time Shift

Act One: A desktop calendar at my work,
a Filofax in my car. Solutions
to complete a 1,000-piece jigsaw
puzzle. Planners were elite conductors of
Beethoven’s melodic and dramatic symphonies.
All was synchronized.

Act Two: My world was rocked sideways
and I was off the track, a catastrophic stroke.
Challenges and obstacles blocked
forward momentum. Therapies,
exercises, appointments and formidable effort
marked the passage of time.
Over many years, I slowly moved ahead.

Bio: Rochelle M. Anderson had a severe stroke in 2007 and almost died. She is still disabled with difficulty walking, and because of aphasia struggles with reading and writing. Ms. Anderson started writing poetry in 2020, which has helped her recovery. Rochelle is the author of Stormy Road: Reawakening from Stroke and Aphasia. Her work has appeared in several poetry books, printed, and online poetry journals, including Magnets and Ladders.

---

A _ _ _ _ _ A, poetry
by Brett Stuckel

I have that thing, begins with an A,
where you can’t bring back the thing
you want to say, it’s in here, and when
I see it on the thing you hold
I know the—word—
word was what I was trying to say,
when I’m holding the thing and I see the word
I get the word, it lives in here in the back
just blocked by that thing
begins with an A, ends in an A,
the word for, I know it,
just can’t find it today.

Bio: Brett Stuckel’s debut poetry collection Neurocabin was published by Spuyten Duyvil in December 2025. His poems have appeared in Magnets and Ladders, Wordgathering, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. He lives with Grade 3 astrocytoma. He is online at https://www.brettstuckel.com and offline in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

---

What I used to do, poetry
by Barbara Brooks

I used to begin poems on empty envelopes.
Today I am using a half sheet of paper—not so much to fill up.

I used to walk my dog, now I pay someone to walk him.
Can’t afford another fracture.

Come spring, I used to plant coneflowers.
This spring someone else will plant them.

I used to play racquetball.
Now I watch birds from a chair.

I used to be 5’10.
I have shrunk to 5’6.

I used to instruct patients how to use a walker.
Now my walker sits in front of the bed to make that trip to the bathroom.

When going forward got to be too much, I sank into the depths of the couch.
I used to have a Wild Turkey 101 and ginger ale. It never helped.

I used to be independent—do for myself.
Now I have to ask for help at every turn.

I used to be straight and strong.
Today, I can barely get up from the floor.

Bio: Barbara Brooks, a Pushcart nominee, author of chapbooks The Catbird Sang, A Shell to Return to the Sea, Water Colors, and Winter Wheat is a retired physical therapist. Her work has appeared in Knee Brace Press, Remington Review, Silkworm, Backchannels, among others. She endures severe scoliosis and depression. She lives with her dog, Ricki, in Hillsborough, NC.

---

Conundrum, poetry
by Sally Rosenthal

I thought I would remember stars,
luminous in the night sky.
I thought I would remember moonlight,
whatever its phase or quarter.
Now blind, I realize how
wistfully wrong I was.
I cannot manifest or conjure
stars or moonlight in my mind’s eye,
leaving me doubly blind at night
and sadly wondering if
I ever saw them at all
or if my mind and brain conspire
to wisely keep me from
images too painful to recall.

---

Part VI. Seasonal Joy

The Last Laugh, poetry
by Lynda McKinney Lambert

Autumn slips gently over foothills
of the Allegheny Mountains.
Afternoon sunshine flickers.
Tawny amber lakes beneath
swelling silvery-white clouds
in a pale blue sky.
A winding creek flows endlessly.

The wooden floor squeak
I rock back and forth in rocking chair
My ageing white dog relaxes
her head balanced on soft paws.

A quiet sparrow lands on birdbath
slips into the water for a moment.

Bright purple Dahlias and Caramel Coral Bells
Silvery Licorice and Dusty miller plants are still blooming.
Soon, the nearby trees in the woods
will change into brilliant hues
russet, ginger, auburn, and ruby red
Ginkgo’s green fan-shaped leaves
will transform to joyous yellow.
Ginkgo will drop all her leaves at one time.
I laugh aloud, dancing
in the golden shower

Yet, the old Norway Maple
Will have the last laugh.
She is the last tree to shed leaves.
My final clean-up job for the season,
raking away all those leaves.

Bio: Lynda McKinney Lambert writes and creates visual art from her vintage home in the Village of Wurtemburg, in Western Pennsylvania. She writes poetry and personal nonfiction essays. She currently has six published books available at all retail booksellers. Her artworks have appeared in international exhibitions, including Japan, New Guinea, Austria, and the United States. Lynda retired from her position as Professor of Fine Art and Humanities at Geneva College in 2008 due to profound sight loss. She invites readers to discover the subtle nuances and beauty of a physical and spiritual world as she weaves strands from history, nature, and her personal life experiences. Lynda’s most recent solo exhibition of poetry and fiber art Word and Bead: A Life Tapestry This show was sponsored by the Hoyt Art Center, New Castle PA in August – October 2025.

---

Welcoming Fall, poetry
by Natalie Warren

A new season
A time for renewal
Of harvest
Of reflection
Of autumn leaves

How beautiful life is
Each moment
Each season
That brings forth

People gather
Celebrating
Thankful hearts
Of each other

Pumpkins of autumn colors
Scent of cinnamon and spices
Warmth to the hands with joy
While cooler breezes in the air

Every season with its uniqueness
Its movement
Its purpose

With the season of Fall
Bringing joyfulness
Continuation of growth
And life all around

Together we celebrate
The preparation for a new season
The transition to a new chapter
A new cycle
Of the year

“Welcoming Fall” was previously published in Avocet Quarterly Journal of Nature Poetry

Bio: For Natalie Warren, music has been a natural companion and passion throughout her life. Diagnosed as legally blind in adulthood, she Incorporates adaptive ways to continue being a Pianist, Educator, Visual Artist, Writer, Music and Literary Braille Transcriber.
Her written works have been published in Magnets and Ladders, Avocet Weekly, and Quarterly Journal of Nature Poetry, International Hong Kong Mingled Voices 10th Anthology, and The MockingOwl Roost.

For Natalie, the joy that bridges music, art and poetry has opened a new door to an exciting and empowering journey.

---

Sea of Clouds, poetry
by Keith W. Norris

The rolling clouds
On a chilly November night
Gray as a prison cell.
The clouds move quickly
In nearly perfect time
With the lurking river below.
The clouds rise and drop
Like ocean waves.
They keep the moon and stars
All to themselves.
They keep coming and coming
With no end in sight.
I stared into the darkened abyss
And feel my head getting light.
The dancing clouds
So quick to show up
So quick to leave
Seem to be pleased.

Bio: Keith W. Norris is an insurance professional by day and a poet by night, but he is no Wallace Stevens. He is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and an MFA dropout. He is on the autism spectrum and has ADHD, and his work is frequently colored by the traits of those disorders. He lives in Moraine, Ohio with his family.

---

Snow Moon, poetry
by Carol Farnsworth

earth covered deepest snow
searching hungry no place to go
deer and squirrels search grounds
hoping food can be found

full moon clear bright
lights the way
through the night
one doe with two fawns
search for seeds
until the dawn

feeling sorrow for their flight
I scoop seeds
scatter dark on white

soon they come by twos, threes
appear ghostly
through the trees

eating now, never filled
hunger driven
they roam uphill

---

A Real Guitar, memoir
by Lorie McCloud

When I was 9-years-old, I told my mom I wanted to play the guitar. I’d been watching the tv program called Hootenanny and listening to a folk music show on a regional radio station, and I dreamed of doing what I was hearing. There was a baby grand piano in the Livingroom, and if any of us wanted to play a musical instrument, that was it. It’s not like I never played it. I noodled around on it all the time, but if I was going to be good at it, there would’ve been some sign by then. We didn’t have any guitar players anywhere in our family: no role models and no instruments tucked away somewhere in an attic. Looking back, I think Mom thought she might be able to out wait me. Maybe it was just a phase I was going through. But I was swept away by it all: singing some of the songs I’d heard all the way through unaccompanied and making up some of my own songs.

So finally my parents got me a starter guitar. It was an M. And E. and it was made of hard plastic, but it had 6 strings that you could actually tune, and they’d hold for a while. I learned the notes the strings were supposed to be tuned to, and Mom read me how to finger a few chords out of a beginner book. So I proceeded to play the thing, and I sang with it just like I heard those people on the tv and radio. I don’t remember what it sounded like, but I do remember the satisfaction of being able to do it.

I wanted to take the guitar with me the next year at Christmas when we drove about 3 hours away to our Aunt and Uncle’s to spend the holiday with them and my grandparents. But Mom said no. There wouldn’t be room, and I thought she was probably right. In our family, surprise was a big part of presenting the gifts. No haphazard last minute wrapping for us. We’d be taking all our wrapped presents for each other, our cousins, and our grandparents. Dad would be lucky if he could get the trunk closed. So we hit the road on Christmas eve all jammed in like sardines with boxes and packages around us. I never minded that ride. It was kind of long, but we listened to the radio with all that beautiful Christmas choral music and Bible readings. Mom had a thermos of hot chocolate, and at some point during the trip, she handed out cups of it to us in the back seat. When I reached up for mine, she snapped at me to keep my hands back. I wondered about that, but she could get really testy when she was stressed out.

When we arrived, the first thing we did was unload the car. I didn’t do that part, but I helped arrange the gifts under the waiting Christmas tree. After that it was Christmas cookies and time to roll out the sleeping bags for the night. We kids all slept on the floor including my cousins. It was a bit like a slumber party.

In the morning there was breakfast and then presents. I don’t remember what most of mine were, but I was happy with them. I was sitting surrounded by them as things were winding down, when my sister brought me something.

“There’s one more for you,” she said, and she laid in my arms a full size guitar case. It wasn’t wrapped, but it was heavy enough to have a guitar in it. I hesitated for just a second before I slowly and carefully opened it. And sure enough, a guitar! A real guitar made of wood, and not only that, but I recognized it.

Months earlier my mom had taken me to a guitar shop and asked the sales people to show me a few guitars. It was kind of like looking through the Sears catalog, where you see some things you’d love to have, and you can dream about them even though you have no means of acquiring them right then. That was a common activity in our family, so I hadn’t thought anything about it. My parents bought my favorite of the guitars I’d touched and played, and it was in my arms. I cried for joy.

Where had it come from? How did it get here? I was dazzled and befuddled at the same time. But that didn’t last long because my brother and sister excitedly began to explain. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. They had to make a plan. They didn’t want to put the guitar in the trunk because of the extreme cold, so Mom decided that she’d hold it in her lap all the way to our destination. This would work as long as I didn’t reach up front for any reason during the ride. Absolutely everybody else had to be told about it. My cousins, my grand parents… Everybody, and nobody had so much as hinted at it. But how could I be mad? They’d had such fun doing it, and for just a few minutes it felt like a miracle. Or maybe that’s how some miracles work, and it really was one. After all, I’m still playing.

On the ride home the guitar was in my arms. I was feeling the notes from the car radio resonating in it and dreaming of what we would do together.

Bio: Lorie McCloud has been totally blind since birth. She resides in Fort Worth Texas. Her interests include hiking or walking, swimming, and reading. She enjoys conversing about psychology and metaphysics. Lorie is a volunteer with The Universal Spiritual Brother&sisterhood. She is a singer/song writer as well as an author. Her YouTube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/LorieMccloud?feature=mhsn. You can listen to her latest music at: https://loriemccloud.bandcamp.com.

---

Holiday Music: Here We Go with a “Did You Know?”, nonfiction
by Marilyn Brandt Smith

October? Really? New playlists are being readied for holiday channels. Once I heard Christmas music in a wonderland of toys, decorations, and treats. It was late August at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store on our way to swimming, fireworks, roasted marshmallows, and mosquito fights.

Did you know Jingle Bells was originally written as a drinking song, and went by a different title? Farmer Gray was having a birthday party in that famous Sleigh Ride song. A Winter’s Tale, like the other two, says absolutely nothing about Christmas, but we place it in that category so we can hear it again every year. I do that same thing with other favorites that are not holiday songs—John Denver’s Grandma’s Feather Bed. My cousins and I crawled into one every Christmas Eve—two heads at the top, two at the bottom.

Other songs kids love go into the holiday file because they celebrate giving, being together, and of course, old St. Nick. Up on the Housetop, written in the 1860’s, only mentions Christmas in a short phrase deep in the chorus. Old Toy Trains by Roger Miller, yes, the funny guy wrote a lullaby, was written for his son. Thank God for Kids by the Oak Ridge Boys has no direct connection to Christmas morning, but guess when it gets played?

Most Christian carols don’t mention Christmas specifically. They tell the nativity story or offer glory to the newborn king and hope for the world. There are two somewhat controversial nativity-related songs, A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris De Burgh puts a spaceship in that field with the shepherds and angels seen as that famous star. He offers hope for the future. In a Johnny Mathis song, When a Child is Born, do we read hope for a second coming, or is there a better interpretation?

Who would have thought Santa Claus is Coming to Town, written in 1933, doesn’t mention a Christmas tree until the bridge of the second verse? In 1954 Perry Como recorded There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays without a reference to a specific holiday. Jingle Bell Rock skipped a Christmas mention back in 1957.

Since those days, there has been an effort to be politically correct, inclusive, etc. Today some artists stretch their imaginations to make sure several holidays are mentioned. Straight No Chaser mixes Hanukkah with Christmas in The Christmas Can-Can. If you can pass up being offended, it’s a delightful song, and they even give a wave to Kwanzaa at the end. The Christians and the Pagans by Dar Williams shows us a family trying to enjoy the holidays together with some curiosity from children who need to understand what Solstice is all about.

Christmas is the incentive for songs written about states. Is it tourism dollars or the taste of home that gets them played? Here’s a short list: Tender Tennessee Christmas, written by Amy Grant, put on the map by Lee Greenwood, Merry Texas Christmas, You All by Ernest Tubb or Asleep at the Wheel, Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby bring on the mai tais, Christmas in the Caribbean by Jimmy Buffet, Christmas in Dixie by Alabama, Kentucky Homemade Christmas by Kenny Rogers, Christmas in Killarney by Anne Murray. Two guys in different songs find themselves stuck in Hollywood on Christmas Eve. The intro to White Christmas is hardly ever played, but it does say he’s longing to be up north. In the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song Colorado Christmas, all the guy wants to do is get back to the Rocky Mountains for Christmas.

Christmas comedy songs used to be harmless. Spike Jones had some funny ones, and put to music a reasonably straight version of The Night Before Christmas, (A Visit from St. Nicholas). Stan Freeberg recorded one about the overcommercialization—we all have our views on that. We just need to remember that all we are personally responsible for is our choices. He also parodied a top radio show in Christmas Dragnet. Our version today of a take on pop culture would be Text Me Merry Christmas by Straight No Chaser. The Chipmunks and many children’s shows peppered the holidays with songs that tickled kids’ fancies. In a long-ago movie, Shirley Temple sang That’s what I Want for Christmas. In one version she actually used the line “From Maine down to the Isthmus” in order to rhyme it with Christmas. I’m sure they do it well down in Panama too. Some comedy today takes liberties with facts, beliefs, and lyrics to Christmas carols. Dedicated Christian folks sometimes have trouble with Bob Rivers and other Christmas albums. Ray Stevens has a Christmas album full of fun.

Surprisingly, there aren’t many Christmas songs with strong references to animals. Although I’m fascinated by the number of cats and dogs it must have taken to record the performances by the Jingle Cats and the Singing Dogs, once a year is enough for me. We’ve all known Rudolph since we’ve known about the sleigh. My son was caught singing the song’s melody before he had words to give it meaning. I know of three special songs about animals. In Do You Hear what I Hear, the night wind sends a message through the little lamb to the shepherd boy. Laurie Lewis offers a Latino ballad about a nightingale with a broken wing in The Gift. Alabama tells us about Thistlehair the Christmas Bear, who spreads the good news everywhere, and teaches children what the star really means.

We must acknowledge the contributions from the classics. There are many choral and solo songs performed every year from Handel’s Messiah. The melody for O Come, All Yee Faithful was taken from a larger work by Bach. Mendelssohn gave us the melody for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. These classics and many others from well-known composers will outlast our top forty favorites.

Speaking of top forty candidates, there are at least three where a line or two at the beginning of the song places listeners in the season, but the story goes on to talk about relationships. The Bells of St. Paul by Linda Eder, Same Auld Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg, and River by Joni Mitchell. Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe says “Christmas” once somewhere in the verses. It’s a delightful song, but it’s one of those where you eventually find yourself saying, “Didn’t I hear that last hour?” It would be interesting to count the times he says “Mistletoe.”

Many Christmas and holiday songs began as poems, legends, or songs from a different genre. Most of us know that Silent Night was originally a poem, and was later set to music by Franz Gruber. O Holy Night was a French poem. O Tannenbaum stole its melody from a song about unrequited love. It became a song about an evergreen fur, but when brought to English, tannenbaum and Christmas tree had the same number of syllables, so guess how it got its English name?

The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers was based on a Russian legend about a night when a troupe of soldiers got so far ahead of their leader, he couldn’t catch up. Originally the soldiers in the poem or legend were tin. The Carol of the Bells is based on a Ukrainian chant welcoming Spring. Good King Wenceslas is based on a celebration of the Feast of St. Stephen held the day after Christmas. In the Bleak Midwinter comes from a poem called The Christmas Carol by Christina Rosetti.

I have by no means covered every genre and every category. If you’re curious about a song you hear or love, ask Google, Gemini, or Wikipedia, and you’ll probably get a fascinating story. Holiday music is meant to spark feelings in its listeners and performers. Some songs spread joy, others make people think. We love to be reminded of the traditions and moments we hope to repeat year after year.

---

Sequence of Six Holiday Haiku, poetry
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

1

Slumber will come soon
if you watch twelve angels dance
on bright Christmas stars.

2

Tangerines in toes
of Christmas stockings will add
weight to surprises.

3

Cradle memories
in the light of the manger:
hold tight to Christmas.

4

Bubble lights shine on
Christmas trees of yesteryear–
simpler, sweeter times.

5

Santa left cookie
crumbs, empty cup of cocoa,
presents-I believe!

6

Come to the manger
with prayers of peace, joyful heart:
find hope, song, promise.

---

Part VII. Slices of Life

The Big Howl, memoir, nonfiction Honorable Mention
by Shawn Jacobson

We walk under the fox bridge on a bright wintry day. The bridge is a way for foxes to access their part of the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Refuge. We walk down a gravel road to the combination office and gift shop where we check in for our tour.

We came to Colorado to visit my parents. This trip into the mountains is a chance to do some tourism in addition to visiting our family.

We are here a good half hour before the tour begins. This allows us to peruse the gift shop looking for Christmas ornaments. I also take a couple of minutes to sit in a comfortable chair in The Wolf Den. Here, you can have coffee and look at a book about wolves as fire burns in the fireplace.

Our tour is called, and we assemble on the porch in front of the office. Our guide starts with a history lesson about wolves. First, we see a map of the United States showing where gray, red, and Mexican wolves once lived. At one time, wolves lived in most of the United States. Our guide flips the map, and we see where wolves live now. Where wolves live now is a small part of North Carolina, and part of the northern Rockies.

We also learn that wolves are controversial. Farmers worry that wolves will kill as they do their thing to survive. Thus, efforts to save the wolf, and to expand their range, face serious challenges.

After the introductory talk, our guide leads us off the patio and down the path to the wolves. As we walk, we learn the rules of the tour. One of these is to stay behind the rail fence closest to the gravel walkway. Our guide tells us to be careful. The walkway is slick with patches of ice left over from last weekend’s storm, so care with footing is wise. Also, since the refuge is at about 9,000 feet above sea level, altitude might be a concern. If we fall, or faint, we are to stay down until the guide can help us back to our feet. With these warnings in mind, I hold on to the rail fence as we approach our first pair of wolves.

First, we see Diago and Dekota. These are extremely rare Mexican wolves. These wolves are part of a cross-fostering program meant to increase genetic diversity in the Mexican wolf population. Thus, these wolves are vital to the future of their species.

The refuge keeps wolves in pairs, one male and one female, to promote bonding and socialization. Another way to maintain socialization is to neuter the male wolves but not spay the females; the female hormones help keep the male wolves social.

Later, we see Orenda. She is the refuge’s ambassador wolf. Since wolves are wild animals, it takes a special wolf to fill this position. Ambassador wolves must be willing to wear a harness and travel to places with a lot of people. Also, ambassador wolves grow out of this position. As wolves grow older, they want to stay in their territory, and they lose patience with new experiences.

As with most animals watching expeditions, I fear that I will not see the wolves; I needn’t have worried. The wolves move around their enclosures and come to the fences to watch us. Once I know what to look for, I have no trouble seeing these great animals.

The wildlife center has animals besides wolves. Towards the end of the tour, we see a pair of coyotes. We learn that coyotes have larger litters when the population goes down, so killing a lot of coyotes is not the way to get rid of them. Our guide said that non-lethal means, such as loud noises or unpleasant scents, are the best way to keep coyotes away.

We also saw a pair of New Guinea singing dogs. This is the rarest of the canine species. The dogs wore jackets because they are not used to the Colorado climate. The cold was a problem for the singing dogs, but it helped us enjoy the tour. Our guide said that wolves are more active, and thus easier to see, when the weather is cold. We thanked the chill in the air for our good wolf viewing.

At the end of our tour, our guide asks us to thank the wolves for letting us see them. One thanks the wolves by giving a big old howl. So, on the count of three, all of us throw our heads back and cut loose with a howl we hoped the wolves would like. After howling, we wait for the response. Sure enough, a howling cry arises from all around us. The cries of the wolves continue as different wolves join in the chorus. This continues for several minutes. The symphony of wolves saying “you’re welcome” causes chills to go up and down my spine as the sound echoes back and forth across the highlands. Surely, this is what we’ve come to hear.

We descend a steep path that ends in stairs and find ourselves back at the office. Here we take another look at the souvenirs, and I retreat to the Wolf Den to contemplate what we’ve experienced. Soon, we return through the bridge for foxes and descend back to the springs to be with our family. As we travel, the wolf howls echo through our memories. We’re glad we made this trip into the mountains to hear the call of the wild.

Bio: Shawn was born totally blind, but now has partial eyesight. Shawn worked for the Federal Government as a statistician for 37 years. He is now retired and travels extensively. He lives in Olney MD with his wife, sister-in-law, son, and an ever changing pack of dogs. His daughter and her husband live up the road in Baltimore.

---

Road Warriors Ride at Dawn, poetry Honorable Mention
by Shawn Jacobson

This early morning
we load the car setting forth
to engage the road.
The air is chill, the sun rises behind us,
The onramp merges with the four-lane road.
Armed for serious travel we set forth;
a cooler full of drinks, a bag of snacks.
The atlas sits behind the driver seat,
Our first-aid kit is here in case of pratfalls.
Coats and blankets stowed in case of cold
We’ll be ten thousand miles upon the road.
The sun comes up over the rolling plain.
The next day now of our odyssey begins.
We think about the things we plan to see.
Lofty Colorado beckons to the west.
Big trees in California call us on.
Death Valley promises splendid desolation.
Iowa’s heartland calls us to our roots,
the miles between with random wonder strewn.
We watch the rising sun from rock-arched land.
We walk beneath the span for photographs.
A new formation’s trailhead comes to view.
Yes, we will follow where the gravel leads.
We hike up steps defined by rocks and boards
past views observed through holes in rocky fins.
We wonder at the works of desert water
as Utah’s sun glides through a cloudless sky.
Sharp sunrise paints the Arizona sky,
we’ve loaded up the wagon headed east,
With all the things we’ve seen fresh in our minds.
We’ve climbed to Alcatraz’s famous jail.
The glories of Yosemite we know.
An alien from Mercury I’ve high-fived
and stayed in that famous wigwam motel,
plus other countless wonders we have shared.
The Indiana dawn shines in our eyes.
Mist rises from the fields to either side.
They reveal hidden mysteries of corn
as we, upon our last day travel home.
This is the last engagement with the road,
before we take the milder joys of home.
Yet, we know we will heed the highway’s call.
For road warriors always ride at dawn.
Early morning comes
with the highway’s siren call.
We ride with the dawn.

---

The Haze of Ming, creative nonfiction
by yuan changming

Ming had long ago discarded truth. It was, in his estimation, a human convenience—a costume tailored to keep the world from overwhelming the senses. Truth was less a revelation than a negotiation, something dressed up and sent into the street to catch the eye of the passerby. Those who claimed to love it usually wanted something from it: comfort, justification, or a quiet place to hide. Truth itself was incidental.

He had arrived at this conclusion by watching the world learn to beautify its own deceptions. Once, the art of the mask belonged to the courtesan or the actor; now, it belonged to the algorithm. Filters erased years and invented a synthetic glow until the self on the screen became more persuasive than the body in the mirror.

It was into this world of digital alchemy that Hua returned.

When Ming saw her again after decades apart, he was startled. She appeared more beautiful than she had been as a teenager—an impossibility that pleased him before it unsettled him. He realized, with the cold clarity of a man who knows his own mind, that what he saw might not be Hua at all. His eyesight had dimmed; his memory had learned to edit. He carried a prejudice of affection. He wanted her to be beautiful, and so his mind completed what reality merely suggested.

Ming had always favored the suggestion over the statement. Like the ink-wash painters of the Song dynasty, he found mist more moving than outline. Fog invited the imagination to participate, whereas clear-cut beauty demanded nothing. Hazy beauty asked to be finished.

During the pandemic, they video-chatted across the Pacific daily, their voices bridging the gap between night and day. Hua was disciplined; she never used the “beauty mode” on her phone, insisting he see her exactly as she was. Yet, under the amber glow of a bedside lamp, with the darkness holding the edges of her face, she appeared luminous. She was contained, composed, and quietly radiant. Ming found himself losing his way in that controlled obscurity. By the time they finally joined each other in body as in spirit in the autumn of 2023, he was no longer merely fond of her. He was totally absorbed.

Trying to parse his own fascination, he once told her there were four versions of her he found irresistible. The first was the woman on the screen, softened by the low resolution of distance. The second was the woman who had stepped off the plane years earlier, triggering a second first-love. The third was the girl in his memory—robust, alive and easy-going. The fourth was the woman beneath him in semi-darkness.
All four shared a common thread: none were sharply defined. Each was filtered—by pixels, by time, by shadow, or by motion. Examined feature by feature, she was unremarkable. Her eyes were smaller than his wife’s; there was nothing particularly worth noting about her brows and lashes in terms of shape, color or length; her nose and mouth were modest. But together, they formed a harmony that resisted analysis. It was his own aesthetics, rather than her anatomy, that undid him.

After they made love at the Shangyite Hotel on October 11th, the day marking the outset of their short annual secret getaway, he watched her lie flushed and trembling, satisfied in the unguarded way of a cat after a big meal of fish. There was a trace of embarrassment in her expression, which might well be interpreted as a silent apology for having felt so much. The moment was fleeting, unposed, and impossible to archive.

That, to Ming, was its perfection. Truth might be negotiable, even dispensable, but beauty was the only contract he cared to sign. A woman’s beauty was a joy forever—or at least for as long as the mist remained. It was all he knew on earth, and all he ever needed to believe.

bio: Yuan Changming co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. With 18 published collections and 15 Pushcart nominations, Yuan has appeared in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and 2,207 other literary publications worldwide. A former poetry juror for Canada’s National Magazine Awards, Yuan began to write prose in 2022 and has released a cnf collection Return to Roots, a novel trilogy Towards, and two poetry collections Bamakoola; Museum of Limerence in 2026.

Yuan is visually impaired.

---

Contentedness, poetry
by Nil F. Kıncak

The smell of shrimp, korma sauce, and peace.
I close my eyes and you take the lead.
Pushing and pulling and spinning me gently
on the hardwood kitchen floor.
You spill the beans on why you buy beans
and tell me about your bigger fears
through which I’ll happily walk with you.
The rice cooker beeps and the shrimp water evaporates
along with the happiness and its jitteriness.
I put down the cutlery as you bring out the plates
and we sit down for our midnight meal
because the burgers for dinner were flashy but not filling.
And on the table, we are content.
More than happy, more than ecstatic.
We have food, we have warmth, we have each other.
We are at peace.

---

My Fish, poetry
by Elizabeth Fiorite

I prefer my fish
Served on a dish
With plenty of butter or better, with batter.
It doesn’t matter
If it’s sardines or tuna Or barracuda.
It might be fried or sauteed or in a stew.
As long as it’s fish, it will do.
Fish must have gills and fins and a spine.
Though shrimp and crab and lobster are fine.

I don’t care for eels or snails, or calamari.

I’m sorry.

---

At the Ball Game, poetry
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

On a September evening,
I sit where he belonged,
in the stands at Coors Field under a Denver sky.
An avid fan, he left this world
after two strokes and six years confined to a wheelchair.

Now, remembering how he tracked games by radio,
I feel him next to me
as I cheer the team’s lone home run,
hold my breath through many strikes.
When the final inning ends in loss,
I whisper to the air:
It’s just a game.
Maybe they’ll win next time.

---

The Macedonia Hotel, fiction Honorable Mention
by Kate Chamberlin

The Zipper Creep

“C’mon, Sis. It’ll be fun,” Grace’s 18-year- old brother, Sandy, cajoled her shortly after their parents had gone to see a movie in the West Wayne Plaza Theater. “You spend way too much time alone in this house. Mom won’t mind. You’ll be with my friends and me.”

He playfully punched her arm. He was 13 months older than her and his friends were her friends, too, especially Randy. Sandy loved being the life of every party and couldn’t understand why, just because she was blind, being in a crowd made her nervous.

“You know my friends and there will be others there to meet, too. It’s only a short walk to the Macedonia Hotel,” he persisted.

They were suddenly startled by a loud Bam! Bam! Bam! As the front door of their home at 12 Stone Street nearly splintered.

“Let’s go, guys,” their friends, Dan and Randy yelled as they pounded on the front door.

“Here’s your long, white cane. C’mon,” Sandy said as he pulled her out of the faux-leather lounge chair, shoving her braille book onto the end table. “It’s only a short walk to the hotel where Big Bertha is living.”

Grace knew the party would be noisy and wasn’t so sure there wouldn’t be drugs. The Macedonia Hotel wasn’t known for its “good” reputation. It was even said that it was haunted. The other three really wanted to go, so Grace didn’t feel she could just say no. Besides, Randy would be there.

Grace quickly fluffed her long, curly brown hair with her fingers, swiped lip gloss on her full lips, nestled the stylish, reflective lenses on her small pert nose, and tapped her way over to answer the door.

They climbed the rank smelling stairs to Big Bertha’s 3rd floor room and could feel and hear the loud, thudding music. It seemed to shake the whole building. As they came closer to her suite of two rooms provided by the Social Services Department, there were bursts of loud, raucous laughter. Grace tried to calm the uneasy feeling that was growing in the pit of her stomach.

They walked into the suite and were immediately sucked up by the crowd. People were shoulder to shoulder, butt to belly, with only smoky air to breathe. Randy and Grace became separated from Sandy and Dan, although, Grace couldn’t tell who was where anyway. She was glad Randy had a strong hold on her hand.

She could barely hear Randy when he yelled into her ear, “Here’s a chair. I’ll try to find us a soda and be right back. Okay?”

She nodded her agreement and sat down. She checked her talking watch for the time, but could not hear the tiny voice. She thought ruefully how loud it sounded in church when she accidentally bumped the time button.

“Hi, Grace,” a nameless voice hollered and passed on before she got out her, “hello.”

As people passed by her, she detected a sweet smell. She’d heard that marijuana has a sweet smell and wondered if this was the real thing.

She reached out her hand to try to figure out what was near her. To the left she felt a wall with flocked paper on it. Her chair was a caned back and seat with curved wooden arms and straight legs.

From the arm of her chair, she gently reached to the right. Her fingers felt denim. It was just a quick touch but she recognized the feel of fabric over a zipper.

With her face flushed and turning redder, she stammered, “Oh, excuse me.”

A stranger’s thick, deep voice mumbled, “That’s Okay, Honey, I’ll give you a half-hour to stop!”

Grace rushed to get up out of the chair and felt a cold liquid slosh on her head.

“Grace, for crying out loud. Where are you going in such a hurry?” Randy asked trying to keep hold of the red Solo cup of soda she had just smashed into.

“Oh, gosh, what a mess. Do you see a napkin or something?” She yelled at him to be sure he heard her above the noise.

“I’ll go get something. I found the kitchen on my way to the drinks,” he hollered back.

Grace didn’t know what else to do but to sit back down in the chair and hope the zipper creep had moved on. She sipped her soda but found that it made her queasy. She bit her lip to calm her stomach. She checked her watch again but, of course, it did not speak any louder than the first time she tried it. Her cold, sweating hands stuck on the wood arms of the chair as her fingers rubbed up and down on them.

How long had Randy been gone. And, for that matter, where were Sandy and Dan?

To take her mind off her rising frustration and panic, she tried to eavesdrop on the conversations that were around her. The smoke was making her feel sicker.

She heard a boy say, “Randy’s pretty lucky. He can leave this one out here and make it with Big Bertha, too.”

“Yeah,” came a reply. “Big Bertha really knows what she’s doing. What a piece of…” but, the rest of his comment was lost as another conversation burst into loud laughter.

Grace needed to get to a bathroom very quickly. She had no idea where the bathroom would be. She didn’t even know where the door was to get out of the apartment.

She stood up and took a step. She felt someone’s foot pull out from under her foot just as she put her full weight on it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Could you tell me where the bathroom is?” she said as she steadied herself.

“Why sure, Gorgeous, it’s just down the hall. I’ll go with you.”

At first she thought he recognized that she was blind and he was being helpful, but, the way he draped himself on her and sloshed his drink on her breast, she changed her mind.

With a quick “no thanks.” she twisted out of his grip. The twisting motion disoriented her even more.

She really had no idea which direction to go to get to the door. Her panic was heightened as she bumped from person to person. Her shoulder hit something hard and her hip slammed into something even harder; a doorknob.

As she turned the knob, she prayed that this was the door out of the apartment and not a closet.

Grace tried to remember if they had turned left into Big Bertha’s apartment or right. Her breathing was shallow and irregular with her heart thudding in her chest, she opened the door. The cooler, stale air of the hallway hit her face. Once she let go of the door, she’d be in limbo. Her mind was a blur, her hands were sweaty and cold, and she thought she would surely throw up.

She tried to think. Did we turn left after coming down the hall or did we go right?

Grace pulled the apartment door closed behind her and stumbled to the right. Big, Rough hands steadied her.

“Whoa, too much to drink, little lady?”

Her mind raced as his hands began to massage her arms and pull her in for a hug or something more intimate. She felt the saliva begin to well up in her mouth, her palms began to sweat again, and there was that awful taste in her mouth as all the contents of her nervous stomach shot up and out all over the stranger. Grace never heard the apartment door being flung open.

“Get your hands off of her, fella!” yelled Randy, as he put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “Grace, are you Okay? Why did you leave the party? I told you I’d be right back.”

“I’d like to go home. I’m not feeling well,” was all Grace could mumble.

Alone and curled up in her pho-leather lounge chair at home, her mind wandered from the braille lines her fingers tracked. Grace was confused.

She wanted to believe Randy’s explanation of being delayed by giving Big Bertha a helping hand with getting another case of sodas or did he really go up on the roof with her?

Everyone knows how easy it is to fool a blind person. So much depends on trust. Could she trust Randy or, for that matter, her brother and Dan again?

Maybe it just wasn’t worth the emotional investment.

A key clicked in the door latch. Grace’s parents had returned home from seeing the movie and sharing a soda at The Hungry House Cafe. Her mom flipped on the light switch.

“Grace!” she said, “Why are you sitting here in the dark? You need to get out more!”

---

What They Said Was Mostly Wrong, fiction
by Heather Glover

“Pregnancy is fun,” they said.

“You’ll never forget the feeling of that little one wriggling about inside,” they said.

“It’ll be the most magical time of your life,” they said.

Lemme tell you, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Sure, the kicks to the ribs, the bulging stomach, the difficulty getting dressed (if you can even fit into whatever tent you’re attempting to drape over your frame), and the fact your joints make you move about as fluid as a mummy are fantastic. I mean, who doesn’t want to wake up thirty times a night due to hip and leg cramps? Talk about a vacation!

But let’s get to the major problem: Hormones. Hormones that make it impossible to regulate your temperature. Hormones that make you wonder if you’ve always been this rage-filled but able to hide it well, or if you’re slowly devolving into a demon. Hormones that allow certain morsels of delicious temptation to guide your brain like a farmer leading a bull around by his nose-ring. And if that craving isn’t satisfied to even a base level, you’d most likely rather deal with the bull.

Here, let me give you my example:

One Saturday, after fighting with the baby’s dresser for two hours (and winning in the end, but it was a close-call on more than one occasion between backward rollers and upside-down handles because why would the directions be easy to follow), it was decided we were going to go get dinner. With night quickly coming on and lunch hours behind us, a quick meal sounded heavenly.

And of course I knew what I wanted: Hot Honey boneless cockatrice wings, fries and a milkshake.

Don’t give me that look, I get to eat what I want once a week that isn’t a green vegetable, dairy product or lean protein.

Anyways, we head on down to Totale’s, who have some of the best boneless cockatrice wings on the planet. Seriously, if you haven’t been there, you need to try it at least once before you die. Walking through the doors in all my awkward glory, I take a peek at the menu to see if there’s anything else I’d like to order to complement those delectable hot honey wings. Maybe an ox loaf sandwich, or some cheesy potatoes or…

…Well, wait a minute here. I don’t see the boneless wings on the menu anymore. After my mate orders his food, I ask him if he sees my craving up on the neon boards above. Obviously not seeing it, he calmly asks the worker if they still carry the cockatrice boneless wings, only for the poor elf teen behind the counter to dig his own grave with a simple reply of “I’m sorry, we aren’t carrying those anymore.”

Now I’m not unreasonable and will normally just pout for a moment, get over it and move on with my life by ordering something similar.

Not when I have an alien-child squirming about inside trying to see how far he can stretch my ribs or just how many different positions he can settle himself into.
This time my pregnant butt stomped a swollen foot down, thrust my bulging stomach out and forced my origami-folded lungs to shout “Damnit, are you SERIOUS?!”. My mate flinched, his face a mashed-up mix of horror and surprise, though it was the elf teen looked about ready to drop in fright. I can see other faces peering out from behind the food-making machines, wide eyes staring between clouds of steam and flashing lights.

Needless to say, my flustered mate canceled his order and apologized to the workers as I stormed out of the building, face blazing hotter than their dragon-flamed burgers.

Once he met me back outside, he didn’t mention anything about my behavior in Totale’s. Instead (like the loving and self-preserving mate he is), he asked what I wanted to eat now. After I thought about it (with only a mild amount of swearing involved), we ended up at Felicity’s and within twenty minutes I had a Honey Gold BBQ cockatrice burger in my grasp, along with crispy fries and a hot fudge milkshake.

Now that my stomach would soon be satisfactorily filled, I also had a huge wave of guilt trying to drown out my conscience. Having worked in retail for years, I rarely lose my temper on workers for things I know they can’t control and yet, here I was, neck-deep in a complete entitled-let-me-speak-to-your-manager moment.
Wiggling my feet and staring out the window, I asked my mate if I should call Totale’s back and apologize for my behavior, or if that would be weird. His reply (bravely done, I have to admit) was that it would be a little weird, but they would probably appreciate it.

Sighing, I stared out the window for another minute or two, silently arguing with myself before finally dragging out my Merlin-cell and scrying the Totale’s number. Then, with an anxious breath or two, I dialed the number and took the plunge. My heart began pounding as I heard the ringing, which was weird as the last time that had happened was when I’d begged my mate for a first date.

Then someone on the other end answered, innocently asking how they could help me. Panicked and forgetting everything I had planned to actually say, I instead slur-mumbled something along the lines of “Sorry, this is going to be a weird call, but I’m the mean pregnant elf that was in your place about a half hour ago. I just wanted to say I apologize for my behavior. I know it’s not your fault but I was so craving those boneless wings and the hormones went ogre-wild.”

And you know what happened? The female on the other end LAUGHED. She must have sensed my confusion through the connection as she went on to tell me “Honey, I’ve been pregnant too so I know exactly how you feel. I always had to wash my clothes with Blue Unicorn laundry detergent because I needed that smell.”

Back in the car, my shoulders slumped in relief, anxiety draining out through my feet as I realized I could right the wrong I’d done. We actually spoke for a few minutes, both on pregnancy tendencies and about what exactly I had wanted from the menu. In the end she was definitely appreciative of my calling to apologize, as she and her crew are only too used to being yelled at for the continuous menu changes that corporate forces on them. She also said she was going to share my apology with her crew—especially the poor teenage elf that took the brunt of my attack. And of course, after I dropped the connection, I felt better, too…and my dinner tasted much nicer without the salty spice of guilt flavoring each bite.

So yes, back to my original point, pregnancy is a magical time, but not for the reasons they tell you. Just remember to try and keep calm, put moisturizer on your growing belly and definitely do not bite the heads off of anyone that gets in your way. Oh, and make sure you prepare for those rage-induced storms of hormones.
Fire breathing isn’t really legal, after all.

Bio: Heather Glover is a 38-year old multiple sclerosis warrior living with her loving husband, toddler son and spoiled cat. By day she’s a development coordinator, by night she enjoys spending time with family, watching anime, playing video games, and making occasionally delicious messes in the kitchen. She also volunteers as a writing mentor for Lit Kids Magazine and has had short stories published in Starspun Lit, AfterThought, and Bad Day Book: Parenting Edition.

---

Raisin the Blood Pressure, fiction
by Norm Cowie

I was sitting in my wheelchair at my desk, and decided to snack on some raisins. Other than including them in bread, cookies or candy, there are two different ways to eat raisins, either grab a handful and jam them into your mouth, or eat them one at a time. I excel at both methods, but decided this time to do the more civilized one.

The raisins came in a cardboard cylinder with a plastic cap. It was one pound, four ounces from California. I kept them on a rolling table to the right of where I sit at my computer. I took off the red cap and then grabbed some raisins from the container. My hand just fit inside. I dumped them on the cap in front of me, so I could just take one or two and eat them as I worked on my computer. I went to slide the cap out of the way of my keyboard, but then my arm hit the open container. It plummeted to the floor to my right, hundreds of raisins taking the opportunity to roll out of the container, giggling with raisin delight.

“Damn!”

I looked down. Probably about half the raisins had spilled out, and they were scattered all over, under my wheelchair, under the rolling desk.

Damn!”

I have long arms, but not long enough to pick up small objects on the floor.

I sighed, and reviewed the raisin carnage. If I wasn’t in a wheelchair, no problem. Just bend over and pick them up. Or get the small hand broom and dust pan from the kitchen and sweep them all up. But I was confined to a chair with wheels, so I would have to figure something out. It was sort of like if you spilled a bunch of nails by the tires of a car, but without the tires and without the nails and without the car. It was just raisins. Dried up grapes.

While I was thinking, my dog came by. He had heard me and wanted to make sure I was all right. He sniffed the raisins, but otherwise ignored them. I already knew he would leave them alone, because he is considerate that way, but he likes a good sniff, even if he knew they were dangerous to a dog. We both wished that I had dropped dog treats, not raisins, because then he’d have handled everything.

He looked at me again to make sure I was okay, and then went off to go look out the window for squirrels.

So back to me, and the raisins, which all looked at me mockingly, like the minions from the kids’ movie.

Stupid minions.

I took another breath and thought. I could go to the kitchen to get the broom and dust pan, but doing it would cause several issues. First, I would have to wheel over many of the raisins which would squeal like minions and stick to the wheels of my wheelchair, and then get even more scattered. Second, I couldn’t really use the handheld broom because I couldn’t reach down with both arms because the raisins are to one side of my chair. My other arm won’t reach that far and even my closer one can’t touch the floor. I’d used a dust pan in the past and got it to work a little by jamming the pan under my wheel and doing it one-handed. But there were raisins under the wheel, so that wouldn’t work. Plus, the broom was in the other room.

I looked around my desk. There were a few things that might help. Then looked back down at the minions, I mean, raisins. The container was reachable, and some of the raisins were in a clump the size of a ping pong ball. Minions, er, raisins, like to stick together. The ping pong ball raisins also seemed to be within reach.

Carefully, I leaned over, supported by my armrests, and was able to grab the container. I lifted it and looked inside. About half of the raisins hadn’t spilled. Good, snacks for later. I put it on the desktop.

Then I leaned again and grabbed the ball of raisins. Hah, got them! I pulled myself back up but then the ball crumbled and the raisin minions rushed back to the floor to hide under my wheels.

“Damn!”

My dog glanced back at me from his squirrel observation window.

I sighed again. I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Hundreds of raisins. What to do.

I looked at my reacher-grabber thing, wondering if it would help. The reacher-grabber is an instrument about a yard long with plastic pinchers on one end, and a handle on the other with a lever that would close the pinchers. It was helpful many times, but it had its limitations. I couldn’t, for instance, use it to pick up my cell phone, which I dropped way too frequently. The edges of the phone were molded in the perfect way to prevent it. I also had attempted once to pick up a credit card I had dropped on the floor. Nope, no way. But it could handle raisins. The problems with that were that the raisins would stick to the pinchers, and I couldn’t pick up many at one time because the tongs are less than an inch wide. Doable, but it would take a while.

Then I saw a small box on the shelf of the rolling table. Ah, that might help. I grabbed the box, and looked at the top flap. That might work. Then I used my scissors and carefully cut the flap off. I held it up and looked at it. This might work.

Then I leaned over the armrest again and used the flap to scoot the raisins until they were no lingering under my chair. Then I did the same with raisins that had tumbled towards the back of my chair. Scooted others from beneath the rolling table. It was working.

I leaned back up and got my breath since breathing while leaning over isn’t easy.

I then cut another flap from the box and I laid the first one on the floor next to the pile of minions.

Did I say minions again? Sorry.

Raisins.

I took the new flap and carefully nudged the raisins from the pile onto the flap I had put next to them. It was working.

Now there were a pile of raisins on the flap. I used the second flap to lift the end of the first and carefully slid it forward until it lifted enough for me to reach it. The minions were being cooperative. I pulled myself back up … my core strength is not all that great with my form of paralysis … and dumped the minions into my waste basket where they mingled happily with the other trash. They knew they’d never be eaten now.

Maybe that was why they had escaped.

For the rest, I used the reacher-grabber to pick up another couple dozen I hadn’t been successful in scooping up, and they joined their buddies in the trash can.

I wiped the raisin goo from the grabber’s tongs, and put it to the side for the next time I dropped something.

Now I looked at my desk. The raisins I had put on the cap were still sitting there in anticipation of me eating them. But I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to eat raisins right now.
I reached for them to dump them back into the container for later, but then my stupid arm brushed by the open container of raisins, and then, before I could stop it, the container fell back onto the floor, spilling out more raisins.

“Damn!”

My dog looked up from where he was watching squirrels out the window, saw I was okay, and went back to squirrel patrol.

---

The confessional, fiction
by Greg Pruitt

The elevator door opened, and I was greeted by the aroma of the day’s lunch drifting from the kitchen. Today, there was the smell of cooking meat along with that of stewing tomatoes. My guess, since it was Tuesday, was that Swiss steak, or some form of that recipe was on the menu. Combine that with mashed potatoes and a few carrots, and call it lunch. The food here was nothing fancy, but more than edible. I thought I knew what I would be having for my next meal.

I turned left and made my way down the carpeted hallway toward the aides’ station.

Susan, a cute brunette, looked up and said, “Good morning, Rick.”

“Good morning, Susan. What do you have for me today?”

She turned to the rack of open mailboxes behind her, grabbed my paperwork, and turned back to face me. Walking to the counter, she handed me a clipboard with the day’s schedule attached.

She looked at me with those pretty, green eyes. “You have a new one. He came in yesterday afternoon. And Mrs. Davis no longer requires your services.”

I raised my eyebrows in response. “Mrs. Davis?”

Susan sighed. “She passed away early this morning.”

I paused. “Too bad. I liked her.”

I turned from the desk and proceeded past the guests’ rooms lining each side of the hall. Outside of her room, in her usual spot, sat Carol and her baby.

I said, “Hello, Carol, how are you today?”

From her seat in her wheelchair, Carol grinned and said, “Oh, I am fine, but aren’t you going to say hello to my baby?”

I laughed. “Of course I am. And how are you today, Maggie?”

Carol smiled. “Oh, silly, this isn’t Maggie. It’s Molly her twin sister. You always get them mixed up.”

“I’m sorry. They really do look alike. Hello, Molly, how are you?”

Carol said, “She can’t talk yet. She’s just a baby.”

I chuckled and continued walking. One of these days I might get the name of the baby right, but I doubted it. Carol never tired of her little game of changing the name of her doll every time I spoke to her. She claimed that they were twins, but as far as I could tell, she had at least four different names for the same plastic infant she called her baby.

From two doors down on the right, the sound of a television blasted. “Charles, you are the father!”

“Another baby-daddy busted”

As I passed the next room to my left, I felt a blast of super-heated air. The lady in there either was trying to raise orchids or forge steel. I couldn’t be certain, but the temperature in that room was unbearable.

One more room where the sound of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” blared at a concert level, and I was at my first patient for the day.

Mr. Carter, an 88-year-old retired police officer, would be here for a few days while recovering from a hip replacement. He greeted me as I walked in.

“Good morning, sir. How are you feeling today?”

“I’m fine, Rick. Ready to get out of this place.”

Mr. Carter’s recovery had gone well. He was able to stand and walk with the aid of a walker. Another week, with a doctor’s discharge, he should be able to walk out of here with only the use of a cane.

“Soon, Mr. Carter, soon. Let’s see how a few more days of therapy go, and next week, you’ll be home.”

Carter’s session went well as did the next two after him, and it was time for lunch.

In the staff dining room, I grabbed a dish, silverware, a couple of scoops of potatoes and carrots, and a cut of the meat.

I asked the fellow, Bob, seated across from me, “Swiss Steak?”

Without looking up from his meal, he said, “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

I laughed. We all joked about the food, but it wasn’t really that bad, and the price was right.

Following lunch, I took a few minutes to familiarize myself with the background of my next patient. Mr. Marco, a 90-year-old, was recovering from a stroke that had required a month’s hospitalization before being transferred here for physical rehab.

He presented weakness on his right side along with some trouble speaking. I would concentrate on the physical needs, and the speech therapist could work on his articulation.

I stood in the open doorway and rapped firmly on the door. The old man, seated in his wheelchair, slowly turned his head in my direction. His television was on, but I couldn’t detect any sound coming from it. The scene depicted the smoke and chaos of war. The lack of noise was fine with me. Our conversation didn’t need to compete with the Battle of the Bulge.

His room, like all those in the facility, was about the size of a hotel room. In addition to a half-bath, furnishings included a twin bed, dresser, and a couple of folding chairs.

“Hi, Mr. Marco, my name is Rick. I am your physical therapist.”

I began with a preliminary assessment. The right side of his face drooped slightly, but not dramatically. He had strength in his left hand, and could raise and lower his left leg and foot. As expected, the right side was a different matter. He could move toes on his right foot, but his right hand was weak with a slight tremor when I asked him to squeeze.

I checked his range of motion on his left before moving to the right. I raised his right arm above his head and brought it down. I moved his arm to the left, then to the right.

I was startled when he muttered, “ess e ather I’ve sinned.”

I laughed. So, I thought, the old guy had a sense of humor, but I wasn’t sure if he were joking, as he seemed to be staring at the cross hanging from the chain around my neck.

I said, “No, Mr. Marco, I am not going to be able to hear your confession.”

I asked a few questions, but that seemed to be all that we were going to have in the way of conversation at that time.

Mr. Marco seemed to tense as his attention suddenly moved from me to the doorway. I turned in that direction.

There was a man standing in the entrance. Dressed in a dark suit and tie and wearing sunglasses, he seemed to be looking at either Mr. Marco or myself, but I was uncertain. I hadn’t heard him enter, so I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

I said hello.

His reply was serious, without emotion. “Anthony is my older brother. I want to spend some time alone with him.”

“Your timing is perfect. We are almost finished here. I was just getting ready to leave.”

I turned and told Mr. Marco that I would be back tomorrow, and we would try a few new exercises.

As I moved to leave the room, Mr. Marco’s brother raised a hand to block my way.

Staring directly at me, he said, “Has Anthony been talking to you? You know, you can’t really believe everything he says. He’s an old man. Sometimes he talks about things that never happened. His mind isn’t what it used to be.”

He was a big man, and while elderly, spoke in a tone designed to intimidate. He acted like someone used to giving orders and having them followed.

I swallowed my unease before saying, “We just met. I am sure we will be able to talk more later.”

“Well, maybe you work on getting him to walk, and don’t worry so much about getting to know him.”

Marco’s brother stepped aside, and I moved into the hallway. As the door closed, I heard Mr. Marco saying something like, “ommy, I din’t ay nutin.”

The rest of the conversation wasn’t audible behind the wall and door.

As I walked away, I realized I was on edge. I felt like I had just been cornered by a high-school bully, a feeling I had experienced once years ago and didn’t like then and sure didn’t like now. What the hell was going on here?

The final two sessions of the day went well, and I finished the day seated at the work station at the end of the hall updating my paperwork and transferring my notes to the computer.

A few minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Marco’s brother leave the room, pause and look my way for an uncomfortable moment before walking toward the building’s exit.

I finished what I had been doing and decided my day was done. But before checking out, I thought I would say goodnight to my newest patient.

I knocked twice on Anthony’s door before entering. As earlier, he sat in his wheelchair staring at a soundless television. He noticed me and watched as I approached.

I said, “Mr. Marco, is everything alright?”

He turned his head and looked away.

I hesitated before I asked, “Did your brother say something to upset you? Anthony, are you afraid of your brother? I want you to know that you can trust me. Maybe I can help.”

He continued to look away. I wasn’t going to get anywhere like this, so I wished him a goodnight and left the room. We had people on staff who had more experience in these matters. Maybe I would talk to someone in the morning.

I dropped off my paperwork and made my way to the exit.

Once in my car, I fastened the belt, started the motor, and drove across the parking lot. As I stopped at the exit, I looked in the rearview.

A large, black vehicle pulled close up behind me, practically touching my bumper. In my mirror, I could see nothing through the heavily-tinted windows. Obviously, someone had to be driving, and I had a troubling idea of whom it might be. The big engine revved loudly before returning to a soft purr.

I hesitated briefly before turning left, and to my relief, the black car went right.

As I drove away, I tried to dismiss the anxious feeling I had as the shadowy figure had idled behind. I told myself that it was probably nothing to worry about, and prayed I was correct, but I checked once more in the mirrors to make sure I wasn’t being followed.

Bio: Greg Pruitt is a retired teacher living in Fenton, Michigan. He is a graduate of the Michigan School for the Blind and Central Michigan University. He has been legally blind since the age of nine as the result of an undetermined retinal disease. His work can be found in several issues of Magnets and Ladders.

---

Front Porch Nestling, poetry
by Robyn-Marie Butt

When your preference is solitude
but not too much
a front porch is perfect.

Zen release
brushes its wings
across stoops.

Sitting neither here nor there,
free from whatever waits inside:
there goes the neighbourhood.

And if you’re the kind
out there with a beer and boozy friends
too boozy for jobs
front porches love your sloth,
will polish it
like chrome. Whatever frequency
spins your dial, a front porch
is trying to tune it in –

giddy as a chick
tumbling into its factory tray
or free range and egg-like
some front porch
will settle you
calmly under its ruffled awning
and brood.

Bio: Robyn-Marie Butt created and performed the poem-and-art project A Hundred Poems About Flowers that became colour-plate books with audio CDs (Boularderie Island Press). Other books include Seasons of Ordinary Time (Mercury Press); My Diary By Volume (Rose Garden Press) – a collection of found lines from her personal diaries composed into non-narrative prose poems; and The Pharaoh of Good and Ill – plates by Southwestern Ontario painter Pat Gibson, currently a finalist for the 2026 WIBA in Poetry. Butt sees her autism aspirationally: as Toad’s Wild Ride from The Wind in the Willows. Raised in rural Southwesto, she lives on Vancouver Island.

---

The Coming Winter, poetry
by Sally Rosenthal

As November ends and days
grow cold and short, I wonder
what winter has, this year, in store.
Another year older, I cast
worn nets and pray to haul
in an abundant catch of time.
In a never normal life, I walk
with neither ease nor grace but
thank God daily I remain upright.
Eyes that once saw sunlight
upon waking now leave me to know
this love beside me, as he sleeps, by touch alone.
For him and small good acts I can perform,
I hope winter holds me gently
as it circles ‘round the seasons
to set me in this liminal space
yet a few more years.