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by Noor Beliën fold your legs in half press them against your chest and allow your bones to crack. hug yourself tightly let your skin be your casket and throw it into the ocean. let it sink to the bottom where darkness will engulf you, swallow you, and spit you out as dust. here you can observe the world, string its beauty into poetry, without being in it. you can admire the painting with its frame protecting you from what’s within. here, the madmen with their greedy fingers won’t be able to reach you. Noor Beliën is an emerging writer living in Belgium. She is a seventeen year old high school student who spends most of her time reading and writing. After graduating high school, she aspires to study english literature at Ghent university. Aside from devouring books, she enjoys spending time in nature and baking.

by Holly Payne-Strange I hope that you gorge yourself on the comfort of silence. Like spaghetti with just a dash of butter, or an old tv show you’d half forgotten. I hope that you find a space that needs no words. That is tranquility itself, a blanket wrapped around you a stillness synonymous with peace. I hope you slip into happiness, like a warm bath fresh, and blissful. I hope you breathe easy and find joy, a rubber duck bobbing on life, a smile brought to lips innocent and sweet. Pointless perhaps, but real. I hope you are happy. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to facilitate that. What greater joy could there be, than this? Holly Payne-Strange is a novelist, poet and podcast creator. Her poetry has been published by various groups including Door Is A Jar magazine, Call me [Brackets], Quail Bell Magazine, and will soon be featured in Red Door, among others. Additionally, she’s given talks on writing at Fordham University and The Player’s Club. She would like to thank her wife for all her support.

by Finn Maxwell The cup sits on the counter. The cup sits half empty. This part of the hospital is half filled with uncanny hushes. The air sits half empty, and I would call it eerie but it’s much more homely. The rivets in the cushions, the minutes ticking by. The page is half blank and asks me half sensible questions. I find it’s hard to stay tentative. The painting on the wall shows me a jungle forest, what a pleasing alternative. Have you considered not drinking? To save your father from hurting? The man's page is nearly full, covered in scribbles on either side. The door is still, but I feel the pressure on either side. You would think, right? To go right to the heart of it. But I found the heart not too long ago in a box buried not deep enough; I wiped off the dirt, and read it a prayer; then, I set it back down, and buried it back with my stare. This is what you do to me with your attitude, I’m all lost in my head, can’t recall its longitude or latitude. I used to be better at this. I’m not very good at this. And admission when vague is no step forward so I take one step back in the wake of every consultation. Do your worries keep you up? I don’t avoid sleep, it’s no contagion to me. I embrace the worries in all their variations, meeting in violent confrontations of which I often wake from fright. Who am I to push away my guilt just to enjoy the night? How does the man talk for so long without so much a drink or a cough to admit a wrong. That’s a lot of church. And it made me no more holy. What children take for granted while in no control of the brake. The gas tank is half empty but I ride past your station for pettiness sake. You know how teens are, And pointing to the scene of the crime is the witnessing. I don’t have my prefrontal yet. Lacking direction is how I learned to speak, purely referential. I tell myself my evasion is only reverential. Following: you know, and like, and if you what I’m saying. My language sits on my left shoulder, and my mind on my right. My language sits half empty. Following: if that makes sense. You’re bright, A word I wish I was brave enough to face at its party so alike, but I would only feel out of place. The bottle lays knocked over on the floor. The bottle lays empty like a lost message washed ashore. Finn Maxwell is a sophomore in high school. He writes essays and poems, often taking inspiration from personal experience and his rural, mountainous hometown in California. Finn is looking forward to publishing his work. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys exploring his local state park, sketching, and listening to music.

by Michael Chin Mike chased the kids on the beach in Wilkinson. His nine-year-old niece Dolly was eager to play. His four-year-old nephew Sam alternated between imitating her and wild, reckless dashes. Both demanded careful supervision. The boy cried out. He’d stepped on a seashell. Mike stopped to check him, check the shell. It was a smooth one, no jagged edges. No blood on Sam’s foot. The best Mike could tell, he was more surprised than hurt. “Uncle Mike! Watch this!” Dolly called. She did a cartwheel as the tide came in, starting with water at her ankles, landing knee-deep. “Careful,” he warned. “Don’t go any deeper.” Their parents, Rosaline and his brother Corey, sat beneath a great big sun umbrella, propped at an angle over their beach chairs, sipping dark and stormies discretely poured into travel coffee mugs. He marveled at how easily they trusted their kids with him, even standing at the edge of the ocean’s expanse. They worked hard, though—Rosaline, in particular, a high school guidance counselor. Corey did something with banking Mike had never wrapped his head around. He was sure they welcomed the reprieve from parenting responsibilities. But he also imagined a certain trust a person had to arrive at as a parent. There was so much to worry about, he could imagine being paralyzed with paranoia and neuroses. Better to surrender control over some things. Still, Mike would have liked another body to watch after and corral the kids in the water. Mike dreamed of having kids one day. The most intimate he’d been with a woman had, in fact, been at Wilkinson, before Sam was born, when Mike had charmed Rosaline’s friend Kate with how good he was with Dolly, and she’d gotten drunk and made out with him before passing out in his bed. She passed along word a week later—through Rosaline, who passed it through Corey—that she wasn’t interested in a relationship, so Mike should stop texting her. He was embarrassed and imagined Kate was too, because she never came along on another trip like that again, or at least not one they invited Mike on. Mike was never an athlete, never well-coordinated, but he liked basketball as a kid, and defense was his strong suit for his speed and ability to focus. His muscles remembered the old motion, sliding side to side to block pathways, to stay with his man. Mercifully, Dolly and Sam stayed close enough together Mike could stop them both from venturing too deep. A woman arrived, in a big floppy sun hat, big sunglasses, and a muumuu patterned in red and blue. Rosaline got up to hug her, and Mike intuited this was Stacy, Rosaline’s college friend who was flying in to join them, whose flight had been held up so they’d gone on and settled into the rental house without her. To Mike’s surprise, she wasted little time casting off the muumuu, hat, and glasses, foregoing refreshments to join them in the water. She was thin, a little gawkish, fair skin that only looked paler in streaks of sunscreen that she hadn’t rubbed in all the way. Her midriff was bare. The tide came in—a warm one, dense with algae. It took Dolly a moment to register Stacy’s presence, but then she shrieked and charged her, hugging her at the waist. Sam seemed less certain, but followed his sister’s lead, toddling forward and hugging her at the knee. Seaweed coiled around her calf. Stacy reached out a hand and introduced herself to Mike. Then, as if they’d been planning it for hours, she fell in sync with him, defending the children from deep waters. Maybe it was his history with Kate, but Mike intuited Rosaline had invited Stacy along to fix her up with Mike and couldn’t help feeling a little indignant about it. He also couldn’t help enjoying himself in her presence. Rosaline had a tendency to correct how he handled the children, and no doubt if Corey had joined them, he’d have devoted most of his energies to sneaking up and dunking Mike’s head underwater. But Mike found Stacy easy to share the space with. She had a youthful energy, even as her wisps of blonde hair were streaked with gray, making it difficult to place her age. She was pretty, though, he decided, as he willed himself not to look at her for too long, not to creep her out. All at once, Sam stopped in his tracks. “New diaper!” he demanded. Stacy stopped. “You’re not potty-trained?” He shook his head. Stacy put her hands on her hips. “That won’t do.” “Mom’s been trying for months,” Dolly said. “I told him he can pee in the ocean, but he doesn’t like it.” “There’s pee in my diaper,” Sam said, a whine in his voice Mike recognized as a precursor to tears if he didn’t get what he wanted soon. Then Rosaline was there. Maybe she’d heard. Likely as not, she’d read the body language. She ushered Sam over to the little blue tent she’d set up for the kids to stash their beach toys, then crawled her upper body in to change him. # Patio furniture populated the house. This wasn’t a home to anyone, but a place for beachgoers to leave their things and rest their heads at night, walls adorned with paintings of seascapes as if to remind anyone who lingered inside too long there was a whole ocean outside their door. But Mike found himself inside. Stacy had insisted Sam needed potty training and should stay in with her until the job was done. Corey half-heartedly protested that it was a vacation and kids should have fun, but Rosaline didn’t argue the point. It surprised Mike she was OK with Sam being kept inside, but he read between the lines that she was ready to give someone else a try at potty training. Reflexively, Mike offered to stay, too. “Out of solidarity,” he suggested to Stacy. “Besides, it makes more sense for someone with boy parts to help, right?” Mike felt relieved no one fought that point either. He didn’t mind a break from the sun and genuinely liked spending time with Sam. And there was Stacy. “Good,” Dolly said. “I’m tired of babysitting.” Mike’s instinct was to find it cute that she thought she’d been babysitting Sam outside, but Sam cried, be it at the insinuation or because it hadn’t occurred to him Dolly wouldn’t stay inside, too, and Rosaline told her to be nice. “You’re such a good big sister. You deserve a break,” Stacy said. Then, to Sam, “I’m so glad we’ll get to spend time together. I’ve been dying for you to teach me to play Chinese Checkers.” Everyone seemed satisfied with Stacy’s validations, and soon enough, it was just the three of them in the house, Chinese Checkers on the coffee table. The two of them played, while, at Stacy’s instruction, Mike used a black Sharpie and six-inch ruler he’d found in a kitchen junk drawer to draw a series of intersecting lines on a sheet of computer paper—five-by-five squares. The idea was Stacy or Mike would draw the animal of Sam’s choosing in each square for each time he peed in the potty. If he filled a row, he could go out to the beach again. If he filled all twenty-five squares, she’d have a prize for him. (Stacy confided in him she’d packed a Transformer doll she meant to give him anyway; Mike wondered if he should have thought to bring gifts for the kids, too.) Stacy was good with kids. Maybe a little too good. After Chinese Checkers, she facilitated a complex game of Red Light, Green Light that involved not only stopping and going, but a purple light that meant Sam had to dance, a blue light that meant he had to lay down and roll forward, a periwinkle light that meant he had to spin. He laughed at all of this and, though Mike admired the fun Stacy facilitated, he also wondered if it was all fun enough that Sam didn’t mind staying inside. Could she facilitate enough fun that he’d actually avoid peeing in the potty so he would get to stay inside another day? True to form, an hour or so in, Sam stopped in his crab-walking, orange light tracks. “There’s pee in my diaper.” Mike pulled down the kid’s pants to check. The diaper was sagging, heavy. “You know, you can stand up to pee in the potty,” Stacy said. “Not like me, or your sister. We have to sit down. That must be nice. Right, Mike?” Mike nodded along a beat late. He took the old diaper to the trash and fetched another. “This isn’t working,” Stacy said. So, they tried no diapers. No pants. Another strategy Stacy had Googled the night before. “When you have to pee, you go to the potty, OK?” Stacy said. Sam nodded but had a goofy smile on his face. A half-hour later, after they’d switched to coloring at the coffee table, pee dribbled down Sam’s leg, onto the carpet. A trickle at first, then the stream. It hadn’t even occurred to him to move to the toilet, Mike realized. His instinct, born out of four years of diapers, was not that the inkling of a full bladder meant he had to go to the bathroom. There was no need to react to the inkling. Only the sensation building, then the release. “This isn’t working,” Stacy said again. Defeated. Mike found a roll of paper towels in the kitchen and a spray bottle of cleaner from beneath the bathroom sink. Stacy grabbed the baby wipes from Rosaline’s diaper bag to tend to Sam’s inner thigh and foot. She offered it to him to wipe his own penis, but he ignored it, focused on a coloring book by then, smothering the top of an elm tree in green crayon, well beyond the lines. A tree overflowing. A tree top too large for the base to support it. He still colored while Mike and Stacy threw away the yellowed paper towel and wipes. “It’s OK.” Mike tried to reassure her. “He’s probably not going to get it overnight, and it’s not your fault. If anything, it’s Corey and Rosaline.” “It’s just—” Stacy sighed, a tremor in her throat. “You know what happens to four-year-olds who aren’t potty-trained? They become five-year-olds who aren’t potty-trained and they rush to learn in time for school. And then they pee themselves, and they’re the weird kid because once that’s the first impression someone has of you, you’re the weird kid forever and no one wants to sit next to you, and all you can think about is not peeing again so you ask the teacher if you can go to the bathroom all the time until kids laugh at you for that too because it’s weird and it reminds them of you peeing in the first place.” Stacy didn’t have to say the last part, Mike thought. “It was me,” she said. “I was that kid.” # They all went to the beach the next day, though Mike had stood ready to defend staying back another day if Stacy suggested it. Outside, Stacy still offered Sam alternating reminders she could walk him back to the house to use the potty or that he could pee in the ocean. In the meantime, the kids seemed content to play in the sand over going back out into the water, squabbling over the design of a large sandcastle. Sam lacked the requisite patience to see through any project that lasted more than five to ten minutes. Mike played with them intermittently and Stacy did too, but she also showed a disproportionate interest in peeling sunburned skin from Mike’s shoulders and back where he couldn’t reach to apply sunscreen two days before. It was odd, but he liked the physical contact, the intimacy. She pulled an especially long strip of dead skin. “That’s a good one.” Corey cringed as he looked on. After another day at the beach, after Corey grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob, and after the kids went to sleep and Rosaline and Corey retired to their room, Mike and Stacy walked the shoreline. “My last boyfriend dumped me because I wasn’t parent material,” Stacy volunteered, apropos nothing. “We’d only been together for six months.” She took an elongated step, pushing sand up into a little mound. “How do you know something like that after six months, right?” Mike hadn’t had many girlfriends. Few enough, short enough engagements, it was difficult to parse someone he had gone on a few dates with from a significant other. But he got ahead of himself on the regular, imagining futures, seeing wives and mothers in each of them. “Right.” “But then I think of my potty-training experiment, and maybe Rusty was right. What do I know about being a mother?” Mike wasn’t sure what to say. The tide came in, submerging their feet, cleaning the sand from them. The sand left behind sparkled, wet and packed hard. He might have mistaken it for snow. “I think this is something like being a parent, right?” he asked. “Play with the kids all day, then put them to bed and have a little time after dark to be grownups. Take a walk.” He wanted to hold her hand very badly. The mention of Rusty deterred him, but on second thought, had she emphasized ex over boyfriend to underscore she didn’t have a partner now? “That’s not how it was growing up for me,” she said. “I co-slept with my parents until  I was ten. All of us in a queen-sized bed, then Mom insisted on buying a king-sized mattress when I was six so we’d all still have room.” “That sounds awful.” Mike couldn’t imagine sharing a bed with his parents—not after he was school age at least. His mind turned to claustrophobia, his father childing him for taking up too much space—he never remembered Dad even hugging him. “I loved it,” Stacy said. “All I knew was having these two people around me all the time. And when I woke up in the morning, at least one of them was always there. And if I woke up from a bad dream they were there. No matter how deeply I fell asleep, wherever my head went, when I woke, I knew I was home.” There were lots of ways to know you were home, Mike thought. The Aerosmith poster on his bedroom wall, or the pattern of his speckled green curtains that he could squint and see faces in—the kindly old woman in the upper left corner he could only spot when the curtains were closed; the scary old wizard with the long beard who always loomed like a terror. Mike thought of other ways of knowing he was home too, though. The smell of turkey in the oven, pies cooling on the counter across Thanksgiving mornings. His father singing along, off-key with the oldies radio in the shower Saturday mornings. Was it so bad to imagine a touch that might feel like home, a family of bodies huddled close in the same bed? Stacy took his hand, threading her fingers in the space between his, just off-center so his index finger and thumb hung loose and her ring finger and pinky must have too. They might have repositioned their grips, but he didn’t want to let go. # The next night, the last night at the beach, after the kids went to bed, after having a nightcap with Corey and Rosaline, Mike went to Stacy’s room to say goodnight. He wanted to express something about what their time together that week had meant to him and how he hoped he could see her again after they left Wilkinson, after vacation gave way to ordinary life. He’d understand if they didn’t, though, and that wouldn’t diminish what he thought of her. He wanted to say something, too, about how he thought she’d make a wonderful mother, but he wasn’t sure he could say that without it coming out weird. She came to him as soon as he knocked on her open door. She kissed him like she’d been expecting him, like he’d kept her waiting. It was difficult to keep track of the rest. How the lights went off, but the door stayed open. It was hot in the room, and it felt good when his T-shirt was off, when the cool breeze of the fan hit his back, better when they were bare chest to bare chest. She was very smooth to the touch. In a moment of stillness, her body pinned beneath his, a gleam in her eyes, it registered that the window was open and he could hear ocean waves. His mind turned to a time when he was very young, some family excursion to the beach. The grownups had rigged a white sheet up in the air—he couldn’t remember what they used to suspend it, only that everyone laughed at how it—their makeshift movie screen—rippled in the breeze. They played a movie that was impossible to follow because even though they played the audio over the speakers of the Jeep that was powering the overheating laptop and projector, the sound had to compete with the engine and the ocean waves. Mike walked out into the ocean waves, waist deep, deeper than he wanted to in the dark but he didn’t want for anyone to see him peeing.  He watched moonlight shine over the waves and thought it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and wandered back, oblivious, right into the light of the projector and realized a moment before anyone said anything that he was in the movie, a part of the action, bathed in yellow light next to some pretty young actress’s face when she closed her eyes for a kiss. At that moment, he thought he might kiss her. Corey yelled at him, “Down in front!” and shattered the illusion. Stacy’s pale flesh built a light film of sweat, reflecting moonlight from outside. He thought she was more beautiful than the ocean, but there was no way of articulating that that wouldn’t sound cheesy, or that would even land coherently to her without the whole story. But who was to say? Maybe he’d have time to tell her his stories. Maybe a long time. Stacy slid a pillow between their faces, confusing him momentarily, before he heard the muffled scream emerge from beneath him. Afterward, he held her, thinking how nice it was to share a twin mattress with her, where there wasn’t enough space not to touch all over. Her hair smelled like fruit—like blackberries, he decided. Like a blackberry patch his mother had taken him and Corey to when they were little that smelled wonderful, and he’d thought to himself all he ever wanted to eat again for the rest of his life was fresh-picked blackberries. He had subsisted on them for a long time to follow—probably only two or three days, but it felt like much longer at the time. He ate them until the small stash remained molded over, and it felt like a tragedy, even then, when his father threw them away. Mike remembered how the blackberries looked on the shrub. Maybe there was some morning dew on them. Maybe it was a trick of sunlight filtering through spaces between leaves. They sparkled. Maybe she’d want to see him again, and maybe one date would lead to another. Maybe they’d plant their own blackberry bush in their own backyard someday. He was getting ahead of himself, but in a space between his fantasy and sleep anything at all seemed possible. On the cusp of sleep, he heard a floorboard creak. His eyes opened. They really should’ve closed the door. The footsteps in the hallway continued, though, and Mike thought to hide away, calculating if it would draw more attention to the two of them if he ducked under covers all of a sudden. But then, it would be odd for anyone to look inside a bedroom, wouldn’t it? Sam shuffled past, hair askew, a little stumble to his step, facing forward. Mike turned to Stacy, and she was propped up on her elbows. Then the sound. The trickle. The steady stream. Maybe steady wasn’t right because though Sam peed steadily the sound wavered from piss on toilet water to porcelain to tile and back again. The sound of a boy unaccustomed to the endeavor, doing his best, unskilled, maybe distracted, too, by moonlight and half dreams. Sam didn’t flush. The truth was, he startled Mike when he wandered back past the open door, back down the hall, back toward his bed. Mike would check on him, he decided. Not right away, lest he scare the kid, lest he inadvertently make a big deal out of him peeing in a toilet and louse up the whole thing by drawing too much attention to it. He’d go in a few minutes and make sure Sam made it back to the room he shared with his sister. Back into his own bed and under the covers, face up, breathing. When Mike looked at Stacy, he found her crying. He was afraid he’d done something wrong. But she smiled. “He did it.” She curled up, onto Mike, hooking his calf with hers, resting her head on his chest. “I can’t believe he did it.” Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife and son. He’s the author of six full-length books, including his novel, My Grandfather’s an Immigrant and So is Yours (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021) and his forthcoming short story collection This Year’s Ghost (JackLeg Press, 2025). Find him online at miketchin.com and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.

by Aleena Sharif Aleena was born in Pakistan and went to school at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She graduated with a BFA and a minor in Art History. After graduating she has exhibited in New York ,Los Angeles, London, Italy , Pakistan as well as many virtual galleries. She currently continues her practice between California and Pakistan where she holds open studies in hope to create a safe space for nude paintings to be shown.

by Svea Bertilius Part 1 I watch her when she drinks her morning coffee. A tiny bit of cream, one spoon of sugar. She doesn’t like it when her coffee is too strong. I used to make her coffee for her. Now she won’t let me. I watch her as she plays chess against one of the staff. Knight to c3. I know all of her moves. I used to play chess with her. Now she won’t let me. I watch her take her afternoon walk. We didn’t live here when we used to go for our afternoon walks. I never know where she’s going. She won’t let me come with her. She doesn’t like to talk to me anymore. Even though she used to stay up all night just to listen to my stories. When I get the chance to tell her about the girl I met when I was young, I will tell her all the stories of how she spilled soda on her shirt so I gave her mine. I will tell her about the time we went on a date at an Italian restaurant, and on our walk home it started pouring down rain so we became drenched. I want to explain to her that she hadn’t brought any money, and I had just spent everything I had on the food, and couldn’t afford a cab, so we had to run home in the rain. I want to tell her how she is my reason to stay alive, and without her I would not be able to live anymore, but she won’t talk to me, because she doesn’t remember my face. A promise to stay together through health and sickness, til death do us part. But we are apart, and none of us are dead. She doesn’t remember the man she made those vows to. The sickness took it all away, wiped her mind with a cloth until everything was a blur. Life is not easy to live, when the love of your life thinks you’re a stranger. Sometimes I wonder if she’s still in there. But I think not. The woman I loved died years ago. I don’t know what is left, or what I’m still doing here. Perhaps it’s the hope that maybe, just maybe, she will remember me again. And we can really be together again, til death do us part. Part 2 I met girl with good looks, I fell in love with her just like in the books. I fell on one knee after only a year, and I’ve never felt such fear. A round belly in the sunlight, I’ve never seen a baby boy smile so bright. The boy grow tall and handsome, my wife and I, happier than some. A few forgotten things, but she always remembered our rings. But the rings were soon forgotten too, as was, how to tie her shoe. No, life is not easy for a man who used to walk through life with grace, when his wife no longer remembered his face. Svea is a 15 year old girl, whose dream job has always been to be an author. She writes both short stories, poetry and even longer unpublished novels. Svea loves to write tragic and sad pieces, but reads everything between fantasy and cheesy romace books. She is inspired by music, Pinterest, and her own experiences.

by Isabel Chaplain Content Warning: There are some light brief mentions concerning sexual harassment. Name: Isabel E. Chaplain Grade: 10 Worksheet #: 1 Driver Ed score of 80% or better to pass classroom instruction. Students must pass the classroom instruction to be able to drive. Public School           Non-Public School P - Pass                          75 - 76 D F - Fail                           77 - 84 C 92 - 85 B 93 - 100 A ______________________________________________________________________________ If a student or parent has any concerns they can contact the Driver’s Education Department at (504) - 365 - 5336. Any grievances by the school may be forwarded to the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Public Safety Services, or Office Motor Vehicle. Attn.: Training and Certification Unit, P.O. Box 46886, Baton Rouge, LA 70896-4886. Note :* Grievances made concerning a large old white man that makes students uncomfortable may not be dealt with because we chose to not particularly care.* ______________________________________________________________________________ 1. What is the name of your Driver’s Ed teacher who just remarked how men drive better than women? Coach Davidson Ignorant Asshole Ignorant sexists asshole All of the above 2. What was your response given to the comment that was just made about how women can’t drive? Roll your eyes Laugh it off ( like you’ve done so many other times before, so why say something now?) Give him a pointed look and scoff ( whilst also mentally flipping him off.) Consider all of these things, but do nothing, only picture yourself doing them in your mind where there are no consequences for your reactions. But as you picture doing these things, judge yourself, as you remind yourself that you’ve never been ( and probably never will be ) brave enough to stand up to millions of men like him. So you end up sitting back in your plastic dark blue chair ( that squeaks so loud you think it's trying to scream for help.) and reminisce about all of the things you haven’t done. 3. How many more minutes until your teacher loudly proclaims that all of the boys in his class did better on the worksheet than the girls did? 5 mins 10 mins 20 mins 35 mins 4. When you get your score of 100% back, what do you do? Choose all that apply As your teacher comes back around with the graded worksheets and finally comes to you, you flash him the biggest smile and remind him about how the boy behind you got 68% and the boy just to the left of you only scored 73%. But of course, you're the one who does worse on the worksheets… right? Bite your lip and look at the girl across from you as she receives her test as well, and notice she has the same look on her face.  As you stare at each other, you contemplate if girls have telepathic abilities, because you can both tell exactly what the other one is thinking,  you're both so over this shit. Only complete the first half of option a. but do not manage to execute the part that counts. Stick up your middle finger to the boy next to you who winked and blew you a kiss as he showed you his score of 93%. Sit and stare as you relish in the fact that you just did a bit better than him, but also want to die a little. 5. How do you respond when your teacher leans over you and starts to explain the different meanings of road signs? ( Remember, they aren’t that difficult to understand, but he still talks to you as if you are five. ) Kindly explain to him that you completely understand all of the road signs ( or not so kindly if you want, because screw him. ) Halfway through his agonizing explanation, inform him that you fully understand the materials and that other students might need his help. ( You’ve caught him staring a few times and want to redirect his attention elsewhere. ) Sit, smile and nod ( because your brain is half dead from the day you’ve had already, and even though his voice makes his face so punchable, you simply don’t have the energy to fight at the moment.) Ignore him completely and break off some plastic parts of your mechanical pencil. 6. Who do you think about when your teacher finally leaves? Your best friend, since she also had to deal with the condescension, the catcalling, the anxiety, the disgust, etc. Your mother, since her field of work, predominantly consists of men that think they deserve the universe, which you constantly have to hear about at the end of long days. And when she tells you about them, what they say, behind her back and in front of her face, what they do, how they treat her, you just want to hug her. You also gain that odd feeling that the universe is somehow failing, because you don’t feel like it isn’t getting any better, for anyone. The woman you saw on a youtube video months ago, you can’t remember her name, only that it probably started with an S or an A, but her name didn’t matter, her story did. She was being interviewed, and she was asked about her most shameful moment, she then started to recount her story, and you couldn’t help but just cry and want to tell her that it wasn't her fault. You also tell yourself that the time you got catcalled when you were 13 years old by that 30-something-year-old man outside of your favorite bookstore wasn't your fault. Or that time when you were 9 and got gawked at and asked questions about your body by boys at the community pool, wasn't your fault. You just wanted to wear that stupid blue bikini top, because for some reason it made you feel a little more grown-up. But after, you threw it away, wanting to put off feeling more grown as much as possible. And as you sit there, minding the helpless hole in your stomach, you just want to see every woman you have ever met, hug them, and tell them that it wasn’t their fault, and they’re ok. You think of every single person on the planet. 7.  When your teacher moved on to explain to the class how to enter and exit an interstate, where does your mind drift to? The blackness of space, millions of miles away from Earth, carries the stupid boys and teachers who stare too close and say the wrong things. ( You also secretly hope that if any of them manage to follow you up here, the sun will blind them so they won’t stare anymore.) You picture yourself in a field of strawberries and some girl named Lucy, she's in the sky with the diamonds as the song says. ( The song was on the radio earlier that afternoon and you can’t seem to get it out of your head. ) You don’t know why the image pops into your brain, but you know it's a nice one. So you cling to it, as you do with the few good things you have. You picture your driving teacher driving onto the highway and crashing at the exit. It's not a pretty picture, but your asshole teacher and highways are heavy on your mind right now. You picture yourself older 23-24, an age where you think people's lives are just controlled chaos. You find yourself in your small kitchen at dawn, new sunlight rising up and through the windows and onto the creamy-colored tile floors. Long plants with dark green leaves and vines droop from the windowsill and counters, and old pictures and kitchen equipment are hung and placed throughout the room. You look around for a moment and find that you like your style. Music is on in the background, you must have a radio or record player because it's certainly not coming from your phone, you don’t recognize the tune, but you don’t care. You approach your window, and after long moments, you think to yourself about how beautiful the view is, but you miss home. The song changes and you hear the bedroom door open, and the sound of footsteps echoes through the apartment. But you’re not scared, because you’ve been waiting for them. You feel them behind you, arms wrapped around your torso and you feel a kind of warmth that blooms in your gut, loops its way around your limbs, and soon takes over your brain. Until you just feel like warm sugar and starlight. (You make fun of yourself for thinking of that  but it's your imaginary scenario, so you can think whatever you want.) You want to stay there for a second longer, but the other person has other plans, they take hold of your arms and spin you across the tiled floor. Soon you are both dancing in the weak sunlit kitchen to music you can’t even recognize. But you know, you are safe. 8. What snaps you out of your reverie? The person behind you kicking your chair. Yelling from the hallway. Another comment that was made by your instructor (Because he just hasn’t said enough already.) You snap out of it because you remember you have to pay attention to this class to gain some newfound independence. ( Even if getting that means you have to go through some idiot to do so. Even if you are scared. ) 9. As your instructor talks about how women can be overly emotional on the road and during accidents, where do you wish you could be? At home, where you can bury your screams in your pillows, and where the walls will keep your secrets. Somewhere with your mom, even though when you vent to her about your instructor and the conversation lands on the subject of feminism, she tells you that you don’t know what feminism is. So you stop the tears before they slip and fall, lay your hands flat on your lap, and look away. Anywhere else in the entire fucking world except this classroom. Someplace screaming off a canyon, where the world can just absorb your sound into itself, keep it, and understand. All of the above. 10. Part A: How many men do you know? Not Many An ok amount A lot Too many to count Part B: How many do you trust? None All of them Only a handful Your not sure about many of them at this point 11. How long does your Drivers Ed class feel? ( Make sure to choose an overly dramatic answer!) 2  hours 2 years 10 years Forever 12. When will your instructor let you leave? When the sky turns into colors that you imagine taste like peach and plum and cherry. When it's dark enough that nobody can see your face or how upset you are. Right before dusk where almost everything looks toned down and blurry, and the school campus that you have to go to to take the course starts to look less like a prison and more like a playground. 8: 00 pm. 13. What will you do when you return tomorrow? Walk in, not making any eye contact with anyone, ace your test (as usual), and focus on the cracks in the beige walls instead of the cracks in your instructor's thinking. Sit through the powerpoints and notes that give you headaches, and leave the classroom at exactly 7:59 pm, so fast that you don’t give anyone else in the classroom a chance to keep up. Grit your teeth and bear it. Say something to your instructor this time instead of plugging up your ears and biting your tongue like a coward last class. Call him out to his face instead of crying after class like an idiot. Execute the part that counts. Do whatever the hell you want. Isabel Chaplain is a 16 year old aspiring writer, she lives in New Orleans and attends the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and studies Creative Writing. She loves writing poetry and prose and hopes one day to have books published.

by Rachel Coyne Rachel Coyne is a writer and painter from Lindstrom Mn.

by Benjamin Bishop Growing up, the garage became synonymous with bad news. A place where nothing good ever happened. It was in the garage, maybe a mere boy of six or seven years old, I first discovered just how short life really was. In the garage, bad news was an understatement. The summer I was going into the first grade, my older brother John and I were playing cars on a chalk racetrack we had drawn on the floor of the garage. Oil stains became lakes, rusty nails were fallen over trees, and nuts and bolts turned into road hazards. When my dad walked in, can of beer in one hand, the door creaking angrily, he told us matter of factly that Rex, our golden retriever, had died. “Dumb dog ran out in front of a car.” Dad told us the bad news as he took a swig from his can, standing in front of our old family station wagon, the same way he would tell the next-door neighbor it looked like rain was coming because dark clouds were rolling in over the mountains. “What did he expect would happen? You play in the street, you’re going to get hit. Let that be a lesson to you boys.” He stared at us for a moment, eyes glazed, as if debating whether or not to say something else. Then he gulped down the rest of his beer, nodded, and walked back inside. I cried in my brother’s lap for hours that night, huddled on his bed, with a blanket over our heads. “I loved him.” John caressed my hair. “I know.” His voice, solemn. “So did I.” John drew a picture of me and him with Rex, to hang up beside my bed. Sometimes I would lie in bed at night and stare at the picture for hours before finally falling asleep and would dream of a world where Rex hadn’t run into the street. Then, the winter of second grade, mom left. Dad took us out into the garage to tell us the bad news. Mom had packed up and left in the night while we were sleeping. “She took the goddamn car!” Dad, can in one hand, pointed at the vacant space in the garage where the old station wagon had been parked, as if to prove he wasn’t crazy. “How am I supposed to get to work now?” She didn’t even say goodbye. Mom did, however, leave a note. John found it crumbled up in the garbage can, beneath the coffee grounds. Apparently, John told me, huddled beneath his blue blanket, sitting on his bed, mom told dad not to go looking for her or she would call the police on him, reporting him for domestic violence. I didn’t know what that meant, but John said it was fancy talk for smacking someone around. I thought that was strange because dad smacked us around all the time. I wondered why, if mom left because of that, why she hadn’t taken us with her. Later that day, John made another picture to hang up beside my bed. In this one, mom was smiling real big. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen her smile like that, and hoped that wherever she had gone, she would be smiling like that now, even if John and I were not. *** “Maybe she will come back for us,” I suggested hopefully, a few weeks after mom had left. We were sitting in our room, me playing on the floor with some superhero action figures, and John, propped up against a pillow on his bed, reading a copy of Stephen King’s The Talisman. “Maybe,” John said distantly, looking up from his book and staring at the bedroom door. He dogeared the page he was on, tossed the book onto the end of his bed, and lay back onto his pillow. He turned towards the wall, his shoulders beginning to rise and fall. “Or maybe it’s just us now.” For a moment, I sat and stared at my older brother, and then I hesitantly put my hand on his back. John flinched away, letting out a small welp. As he pulled away from me, I could see an angry dark blotch on his lower back where his shirt had lifted. “What happened?” I asked, pulling my hand away quickly as if I had made the mark on his back. “Dad happened.” He wrapped his blue blanket around him, and I could tell he was crying. I lay down next to John, staring at the picture he had drawn of mom. I wondered if mom had found what she was looking for. I was angry that she had left us, but I was happy that John was still here with me. We stayed that way for a long time, him crying, and me staring at the picture of mom. I knew at that moment, mom was never coming back for us. She had left us. It was just like John said. We were all alone now. I got out of bed and crumbled up the picture of mom. *** I didn’t mean to break the TV. I was just so frustrated, and the TV was the first thing I saw. The instant I hit it, I knew I made a mistake, and a grave one at that. John and I were playing video games and he beat me again. He always won, and for the first time in my childhood, I thought I was finally going to beat him. Before I could stop myself, the video game controller left my hand, and then there was a crash as it connected with the center of the TV screen. We both watched the glass shatter like a broken windchime, sending out a web of cracks in every direction. The TV flickered for a moment, before fizzling out, just like my chances of getting out of this alive. Dad heard it too. “Come out here now!” He was in the garage. I looked at John and began to tremble. Tears spilled down my cheeks. “I said now!” I couldn’t move. The image of the controller hitting the TV kept replaying in my mind and I knew that dad was going to do the same to me. I looked at the door to the garage, back at John, then walked slowly towards the door. As I turned the handle shakily in my hand, I felt John push passed me as he instead went into the garage. The door slammed behind him like the reverberating lid of a coffin. I stood there for a moment, for what felt like forever, unsure of what to do. Voices coming from behind the closed door, muffled nonsense. The door, a barrier between life and death. And then my brother was back. “He won’t bother us anymore.” His collar was stretched and torn and stains the color of rust were scattered haphazardly on his shirt. “I’m going to go lie down.” John limped down the hall towards our bedroom and then closed the door. I didn’t see my dad again until three days later. He was hanging from the rafters in the garage, a rope around his neck. *** Besides me, there were only five other people at the funeral. The pastor, my uncle, and a family of two parents and a little girl with black pigtails. She was the one he had saved. John and I had been out in the garage, packing boxes. We were moving later that week to go live with our uncle, mom’s brother, from up north. When the social worker contacted him, after dad’s death, our uncle said he would be willing to take us both in. We had never met him before, but a change of scenery sounded just fine. John saw it before I did. He always did. He was always better than me at everything. The ball went rolling into the street and the little girl with black pigtails had gone chasing after it, and her mom went chasing after her. But John was faster and got there first. The police said that the impact of the car killed John instantly. I think they were trying to provide me with some sort of comfort, but it didn’t help. John was still dead. During the three days that dad was gone, before he came back home and hung himself, John and I were lying in our beds at night and I asked him what had happened in the garage. His silence was deafening. He was quiet for so long, I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me or that he had fallen asleep, but then he did answer. “You happened.” John got out of bed and put his blue blanket over me, tucking me in. “Now go to sleep.” I didn’t understand what John meant that night, but now, sitting here at his funeral, I think I finally did. Looking at the little girl with the black pigtails, it made sense. John had gotten there first. *** I sat on the floor of my and John’s empty bedroom with John’s blue blanket wrapped around me. All our memories, packed inside boxes in the back of a moving truck. Everything was gone from our room except the pictures that John had drawn me. Those were still tacked to the wall. Somehow I had missed them in the busyness of all the packing and John’s funeral. I was leaving to go up north with my uncle, but I told him I wanted to see our room one more time before we left. I don’t know when John did it, but sitting there in the bareness of the room, I saw that he had drawn one more picture. It was hanging in-between the picture of me and him with our dog Rex and the crumpled up picture of mom. One last memory. I got up, letting John’s blue blanket fall to the floor, and began untacking each picture, careful not to tear the corners. First, the one with Rex, and then the one of mom. The last one, the one John had somehow secretly drawn, I let hang there for a moment. The tears came again, along with a smile. In this last picture, John had drawn a picture of us. Me and him. In it, we were standing on his bed and we were both smiling. Around John’s shoulders, flowing across the paper, was John’s blue blanket, except John had written the words, “My superhero cape.” I couldn’t help it, but I began laughing through the tears, which sounded strange in the empty room. I carefully took down John’s last drawing, folded it with the others, and put my memories in my pocket. I gave our room one last look before picking up John’s blue blanket from off the floor, wrapping it over my shoulders, and closing the door behind me. Benjamin Bishop resides in Riverside County, CA. Benjamin has both a Bachelors and Masters in English Literature. Benjamin has poetry, fiction, and non-fiction published in several literary magazines and anthologies, such as Clever Fox Literary Magazine, The Expressionist Literary Magazine, Hey Hey Books, The Humanist, The Malu Zine, and Reverie Magazine.

by Christian Ward “Most mussels stay in one place for their entire lives” the website stated. Dull, obsidian vaults, shutting themselves out to the world. How sad it must be not to taste the forest's window opening to let sunlight tickle your face in the morning, to enjoy snow making everything yeti, to inhale a season's worth of joy in a meadow? Perhaps. Or perhaps it's okay to root yourself in one spot to heal again, to feel the nourishing sea rebuild whatever was lost and is now asking to come back, please can I come back? Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with new work in Dreich, Dream Catcher, Dodging the Rain and Canary. He was longlisted for the 2023 Aurora Prize for Writing, shortlisted for the 2023 Ironbridge Poetry Competition and 2023 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and won the 2023 Cathalbui Poetry Competition.

by Kim Hayes Kyle was running on his usual jogging route when the ad appeared. He cursed as it showed up just as he was crossing a busy intersection. It was also right in the middle of his line of sight. “Shit, why can’t these things be in my peripheral vision?” He swiped at it like it was a fly, and a car turning into the intersection almost hit him. “Dude! Watch where you’re going!” came the shout from the car. Driving was almost as bad, if not worse, these days. The ads would show up on the windshield, taking up the entire window. People had been complaining that one day they would cause a serious accident. The content of the ads was nothing new. They were the usual products, the usual ‘if you have been in an accident’ lawyers, run-of-the-mill stuff. Every citizen had implants now, as required by law. Inventors and investors of the implants insisted they needed the ads to keep them up to date and working properly. But everyone hated the ads. You could turn down the volume, make them smaller, have them not show up as often, or even have them not show up at all, but of course that cost money and was out of most citizens’ price range. Only the powerful and rich didn’t have ads. Ads were supposed to be customized to an individual citizen's lifestyle, but even that was often questionable. Kyle’s implant had been giving him too many ads about products and services he had never used and knew he never would. He had a mental note on his implant to inquire about it, but trying to get in contact with a live human was getting more and more challenging. It’s not just that everything was online, or virtual, there was just no human interaction at all with anything anymore. He had heard all the stories from his parents and grandparents about humans talking to each other, doing things as a group in public, or even doing things in private with each other. Things that he had only read about in those old magazines and books. His parents kept some around for nostalgia, and it was amusing to read over them occasionally. He was glad at least his parents had taught him how to read and write. Citizens who had gotten implants as soon as birth had no clue to do either. Kyle was at the end of his jogging route. He had spent most of the jog wondering how he could get rid of the ads. Maybe it was just time to pony up the money to be rid of them. He started to make a mental note, but then decided he didn’t want that on his implant. He knew someone had access to that information. Not taking any chances, he wrote a physical note out for himself to see if his parents would lend him money. And his birthday was soon. That could be his birthday present. An ad free life. Kim lives and works in Chicago, IL. She works for the Chicago Cubs. She has been writing for a year and has had three stories accepted for publication.

by Jillian Thomas i. soldier i let my enemies decimate me and leave my skin on the battlefield for wild animals to devour: maybe they will have a use for my ribs- forever pressed against my suffocating skin. but sometimes i am a soldier, launching missiles into opposing camps and making them pry my last breath from my eternally fighting lungs and i report to the general nestled in my head- one wrong move and a landmine detonates beneath my feet and i am thrown to the wolves ii. poet at my very core, i am a poet, and i believe this wholeheartedly. how could i not be, with unnamed emotions crawling under my skin, begging to be penned and immortalized? i would not refer to myself as a poet anywhere outside my bedroom until i was officially published but now when novices ask for advice i always tell them that writing a poem makes you a poet how brave it is to try and make sense of your deepest fears. iii. king i am a king of many things, but can never be appointed the ruler of my own thoughts, no, they are controlled by someone else someone who plays russian roulette for fun and drinks whiskey to excess but i am the king of manipulation- of caramelizing the kicking monsters that deform my neurons with their breath until they are pacified and i have at least the illusion of control. Jillian is a 17 year old poet from Pennsylvania who writes about outer space and mental health, among other things. In her free time, she listens to music, skis, plays chess, runs a literary magazine, and naps with her cat.