Everything that the body survives is kept in a private inventory in the body.

It does not give announcements of these things.

—

It retains them in the knees,

where the jaw is connected to the skull,

In the manner in which the breath falters.

Before you enter a room, make sure the door is shut.

—

I know grief like the muscle memory of a song—

How it comes back – without permission

If the sound of a particular door is too quiet,

When someone’s voice sounds like a close copy of another person’s voice.

—

Even happiness is captured like this.

—

Not as celebration,

but as aftertaste.

—

The body stores the sensation of holding onto something.

After the arms have been removed.

—

It is like a memory of what was not there. It is like a memory of not being there.

Like absence took a form.

—

Yet it carries on its normal business:

The blood that circulates in corridors,

when a person wants to go somewhere even though they have not been invited

skin pretending it isn’t a map of all that it’s lost.

—

It is such an endurance no one teaches.

—

It comes already knowing.

Collins C. Oparaocha is a writer and poet. He lives and writes in Turkey. His work has appeared or forthcoming in Empyrean Literary Magazine, Abstract Magazine, Dualiterary Magazine, Merion West Magazine, Pink Ochre Literary Magazine, Still Point: Poetry & Culture, Homeplace Magazine, Blue Daisies Journal, and elsewhere.

Lately I’ve noticed that your mother, Marianne, seems stuck in place. Fixed to the window. Her body turned to look out the window, waiting for something.

I can’t blame her. You are ephemeral. She thinks that if she doesn’t keep constant watch, you would fly right past us. Heavy, decisive downstrokes of feather and wind, right past the mailbox. Past the street and towards the sun. We’d never know you were there.

It’s a big window. A bay window. We bought throw pillows with seashells and a white blanket that flops more than it drapes. Holding it up against the too bright, too white light of the Homegoods, Marianne had said, It’ll furl out. It holds like that because it’s new.

That was only two weeks ago. We moved from Oakland to Alameda because she wanted to be closer to the water. Two weeks ago it was all about the water. Crystalline under the sun and ink under the moon. Somewhere in that time, she came up for air and swam back to shore.

Now everything is all about the birds.

Large saltwater shorebirds. Seabirds are fine too, but they’re too far out to get a good look. White and infinitesimal, spittle on the sea-line. You get something out of the shorebirds. A season of killdeer limp fragile-legged, steering you out of the parking lot, your own driveway. An egret, neck bent to chip at a cluster of rocks. A peregrine falcon, she tells me, right on top of our mailbox after I came home from the grocery store.

Every winter, a dance of sandhill cranes stretch over a crepuscular sky. The sandhill cranes are Marianne’s favorite. Red-hot heads and beaded amber eyes. The skinniest legs. All in abundance. Thousands of them, smothering. Untethered. Free. Carrying only themselves in the meat of their bodies and in the bones of their legs.

I get worried. Sometimes I think she’ll walk too far out and not come back. I can’t lose anyone anymore. One night, she says:

I think they’re trying to tell us something. We’re washing dishes. She is pointing out that this house is a bird-magnet the way no one else’s house on this street is. Like, literally. I think the cranes can talk. They stare at me and open their mouths for several minutes.

I think you might need to rejoin that pottery class. Start seeing people again., I tell her. There is pasta sauce in a groove of this bowl that just will not come out.

You don’t believe in anything. You know, I used to be able to speak with anything. When I was a kid, my parents used to find me talking to ghosts, and I would be wondering why it was so weird that I was talking to a new friend. Marianne is drying the last wine glass on the rack.

We need ghosts in that way.

We need something that understands. Maybe it’s ghosts and maybe it’s the birds. Everything is someone if you know how to fish it out.

When I met Marianne, something had burst. I think you should know this story so you’ll be able to tell someone special.

It was at my former roommate’s housewarming. She was his boyfriend’s beard in college—well, sort of. Can you be a beard if you know? Because she knew. And that was the end of that.

She shook my hand and rubbed my shoulder and bit her straw in a way that let me see that thin plastic tube sink into her bottom lip as she laughed. We were both twenty-four. Born just a week apart. She laughed hard at this, the coincidence of it all. She said I was just too funny.

I thought then that maybe she’d just wanted something from me. I wasn’t that funny. I would have given it to her. The drink had vanished and the glass stood cold and alone on the countertop. She’d been biting her lip now, waiting on me to answer: Oh, so what kind of journalism do you do?

I got through two syllables of mainly local news, sometimes investigative which is what I’m really gunning for, like, as a full time thing before pain grabbed at my belt and tugged downward. On my knees. I hadn’t been feeling well, sure, but I was twenty-four and infallible. I am not fallible, I had realized. I am not infallible and I am a fleshy, fragile thing. Not a machine. Something less streamlined. I looked up to see Marianne, panic-eyed and trembled and I thought I heard her mouth move to say are you okay? Something along those lines. I wouldn’t know. I’d passed out by the time her lips pouted out to say: you.

When I met Marianne, something had burst. In the emergency room, Doctor Neha Srivastava told me it was my appendix and that I am very lucky to be alive. Marianne was there. She had driven me. Speeding with my slumped body in the backseat. Pushing faster and farther. She’d sat there, nodding along to how long I was supposed to stay here. Like she was going to be there for it. I felt like I’d been given a glimpse into the future. Marianne is there and I get to look up at her. She holds my hand. I run my fingers over the smoothness of her manicured nails. Again, with her body turned.

Or maybe it’s better to say before.

We were going to name you Jamie.

A sensitive name for a sensitive little boy. We thought you would have been one. I am a journalist and Marianne is a casting director.

We figured we’d carry you around, your small all-breathing body in our arms, as we took you to work with us. You’d see all the writers and actors and directors and they’d all say as though you’ll remember: we all just want to make the world a song. I think you would have remembered. I think you would have made the world a lovely song. We bought a toy xylophone, eager to hear you smash the wooden sticks into it. Made all those discordant sounds. Maybe, had found something beautiful in between.

We would have been very annoying about it, Jamie. About you. We’d make you wave at strangers on the BART and we’d take photos of you in our office chairs and in the arms of people we’d think you’d find impressive. We imagined we’d have a big photo album for your big, big life and you’d look at a photo and say, holy shit, is that Zendaya holding me? Is that the President? And you’d think we’re so cool. It’d feel like breathing. You wouldn’t have thought that about either of us for years before that.

We bought you so many nice clothes. It’s a shame this didn’t work out because we bought you so many nice clothes. Little jeans and little corduroy overalls. Little shirts and little shoes. These are all very selfish things to care about. I love you very selfishly, Jamie. There’s no other way to go about it. We would have loved to watch you slip into personhood. We would have zipped and buttoned and adjusted all that we could.

Yesterday, I decided I would sit on the couch with Marianne. Looking out and waiting.

For the first time, our bodies had turned to look out the window. But nothing had been there. The sky was crepuscular and we both agreed that you would have found it beautiful. We had stayed anyway. I sit there with her, still looking out at nothing, but the truth here is, Jamie, that everything feels like something with her there. Momentous. And the truth now, Jamie, is that Marianne is someone who makes this happen by being there.

A sandhill crane. All by itself. It is shorter than the ones she has seen. The crane turns to look at us and says, there you are. They sent me to the wrong address and now I’m a crane. We would have been so happy together. You couldn’t love me like this.

We tell him, we would have been the happiest. We would have loved you in every way. We still do. Come and sit. We have left a space for you between us since we first heard about you.

Kavya Racheeti was born in Hyderabad, India and raised in Fremont, California. She is a literature major and biology minor from the University of Texas at Dallas. She has been a part of the editorial boards for two award-winning collegiate newspapers, The Retrograde and The Mercury. She also writes for her university’s opinion and satire magazine, AMP. When not writing, she likes to pretend that she is the Anthony Bourdain of the DFW metroplex by finding the best, most-niche restaurants.

Black

Bitter

And without cream.

Coffee should taste like dirt,

To some degree,

Or any degree you please.

Coffee should be consumed quickly

Devotionally

And without pride.

Coffee is best taken

Alone,

Adrift in the memory of some

Sunday morning

From the early Sunday morning

Of the swingset years of your

Open book.

Steam coming off the pavement;

Hot water on ice.

My brothers and I smile,

The way we used to.

Paul Regan is a writer, teacher, girl-dad, and co-founder of the Loathsome No More! Independent Publishing Collective. He currently resides in Charlottesville, VA.

How beauty, how kind, how was the evening

when the sun could still scream a light to a tree.

How feverish, how bold,

the leaves are rushing, the leaves are gold.

How strange, how dangerous, when my friends

must eat or a creature who growls

in their tummies will eat them.

It’s simple.

When you let a little hunger grow by four,

your body will eat by itself,

so I cooked them dinner since and many things

with some sinangag and sinigang,

served on a red bowl—a suppression,

then put it on a table—a virtue,

the one covered in a textiled fabric,

the one your mama made, the one your favorite,

the one you named.

A late evening is a time for reflection

and breathing anew

from the sun’s resting and night’s

clothing.

Trees made whispers, made winds,

and vined everyone’s witnesses

and birds too,

to see the beginning of the never ending,

like how

the sun sees the night,

they are the gods of the facing gods.

It is time, it is a sign, it is to remind,

when wounds burn

into stardust,

and tears burn into gold leash,

it is time, it is a sign, it is to remind,

you are what you’ve been dreaming,

you are what you’ve been wanting,

and you repeat and

eat a good amount of adobo and laugh a little light

and dry a thunder,

knowing that you are truly

and bravely made to

have a life to live and have a life to love,

and have a life to be

and have a life to see.

It is time, it is a sign, it is to remind,

that you can be good again,

that you can be good again.

Adonis Alegre is an Ilocano poet who writes in English. He resides in Bacnotan, La Union. He took up his Bachelor's Degree in AB English at Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, Philippines. His poems have been published in Querencia Press, Livina Press, Levitate Magazine, Everscribe Magazine, Wild Willow Magazine, The Poetry Lighthouse, and elsewhere.

The visitors astonished us.

They sailed on solar winds,

tacked by Lagrange Points.

Knew that time looped on itself,

used Möbius as proof.

No speech - just telepathy.

All their thoughts vibrating

beneath a mucous skin.

But we astonished them.

They stared at creamy pages,

probed cuneiform on clay.

Were baffled by technologies

for extending memory

into what never was.

And held books in their tentacles

as carefully as florists

arranging long stems.

Iain McClure is a poet from the North of Ireland. He now lives and works in Kent. He writes about time, space, nature and memory. His current work explores a multiplicity of voices and personae, as well as testing the limits of the lyric mode.

When we went to our twenty-fifth reunion

the bipeds there were not the ones we knew:

their molecules, atoms, and subatomic

particles had been replaced by new

ones. Memories were transferred to new cells

that hold memory banks, so Fred could say,

“Hey, Karl, it’s good to see you. What’ve you

been up to lately?” to Karl. But a few

old friends mistook Karl for Bill, you, or me.

At my fiftieth I plan on pretending

to be someone else, just to see what happens.

Where have the molecules that made us up

gone to? We know where the new influx comes

from: air, food, water. Outflux: exhaling,

perspiring, and so forth. (I won’t be vulgar.)

And other folks have breathed our atoms in

or drunk us, as have animals and plants,

as we have breathed and drunk and eaten them.

That’s why, when I pretend to be someone

I’m not—or rather someone I was not,

I won’t exactly be lying.

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James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. He has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale, James hosts the Writers' Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins are always welcome.

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She lies akimbo atop her canopy

Then splays her spruce and pine

Stretching her magnificent limbs

Toward the sky

They twinkle and laugh

Holding hands and swaying

In the evening breeze

Welcoming

They tell the lines on the road

You may explore us

Travel gently and tenderly

Like my super highway of roots

Here we lend water and nutrients

No matter what species of tree you are

We are family and hold each other up

Do share gracefully

Wind through our splendor

Open eyes wide

In awe and bliss

Our cells mend

Bark, branches, needles

Staving scurvy and toxins

Our spruce soul

Builds houses and makes beer

Let us share healing, shelter, and comradery

Tinctures, discoveries, and stories

Campfires and adventures

Low fragrant voices

Melodic in the magical night

Our millenia of one

Funnel our sacred gifts

Into the atmosphere

Sharing bones and hides

Fossils, phosphorus, phenomena

Calamity and kaleidescopes

Brilliant and grand

We’re quite the pair

Lucy Ernst is a singer, songwriter, and musician residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Art helps her process her interior and exterior worlds. She recently wrote the lyrics for an opera film mashup about the climate crisis and is having a blast teaching herself to play her slightly out of tune piano her friend gifted me. In this crazy world she wishes we would be more like the trees in Canopy.

I am in my front yard

raking leaves

-

and a friend,

a fellow poet,

walks by

with a golden lab

on a leash.

-

He stops,

and I pat the dog,

and we agree

on how nice

the weather is.

-

That’s right.

We both use

the word “nice.”

-

Poetry died then.

-

Even an expression like

“mildly agreeable”

could have saved it.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.

He felt the wrongness before he understood it. A subtle tilt, the same kind he had felt on the street corner months earlier, the same quiet misalignment that had crept into his memories and blurred their edges. Nothing dramatic, nothing he could point to, just a sense that the night was leaning toward something.

He sat at the small kitchen table, the same one where Brian’s laughter had once echoed and then slipped away and tried to read. The words refused to settle. They shifted under his eyes, rearranging themselves into shapes he couldn’t quite hold. He closed the book and listened to the silence.

It wasn’t an empty silence. It was a waiting one.

He made tea he didn’t want. He walked from room to room without purpose. He kept glancing at his phone, though he wasn’t expecting a call. The night felt like a hallway with all the doors closed, and he could feel the weight of one of them about to open, though he didn’t know which or why.

The air pressed against him. The stillness deepened. The tilt sharpened.

He didn’t know yet. Not then. But the night already did.

He tried to steady himself by washing dishes. The warm water grounded him for a moment, but then he heard it; not laughter this time, but a faint exhale, a breath that didn’t belong to the room. He turned, expecting to see someone behind him.

No one was there, of course.

The window was still open. The air was still warm. The silence was still waiting.

He dried his hands and sat back down at the table. A pressure gathered in his chest, not pain exactly, but a tightening, as if his body understood something his mind refused to name. He tried to breathe through it. He tried to tell himself it was nothing. He tried to believe the night was just a night.

Then the phone rang.

He didn’t remember crossing the room. He didn’t remember picking it up. He only remembered the voice on the other end, quiet and strained, saying his name in a way that made the world tilt again. Sharper this time, perhaps, as if the missing frame had finally revealed itself.

He listened. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move.

The words came slowly, as if the speaker were trying to soften them, but there was no softening. There was only the truth, and the truth was a blow.

“Sorry, just thought you would want to know.”

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He closed his eyes. The room felt suddenly colder, though the air hadn’t changed. The silence that had been waiting all evening finally settled around him, heavy and absolute, the same silence that had followed him from the balcony, to the little ring box, to the shifting colors of a sweater he could no longer trust himself to remember.

He didn’t cry. Not then. Not for a long time.

He sat at the table with the receiver still in his hand and stared at the open window. The night outside was dark and unmoving. The street was empty and the lamplight was fixed in place. He thought of the hallway from his dreams, the one where laughter drifted just out of reach. He thought of the woman on the corner whose outline kept changing. He thought of the ring in the box, the unfinished melody on the balcony, the shadows that had followed him from room to room.

Everything felt connected now, though he couldn’t say how. Everything felt like a warning he had failed to understand.

He stood, finally, and closed the window. The air inside the room felt different, as if something had left it. He leaned his forehead against the glass and whispered Brian’s name, not expecting an answer, not expecting anything at all.

The silence held him.

He stayed there a long time, listening to the quiet, trying to understand how a life could end on a night that felt so ordinary; how grief could enter a room without making a sound; how the world could tilt and never tilt back. The air around him felt thinner now, as if something essential had slipped out through the open window before he closed it, leaving the room slightly off balance.

He let his hand rest against the glass. It was cool beneath his palm; cooler than the night had any right to be. The warmth that had unsettled him earlier was gone, replaced by a stillness that felt final, a stillness that seemed to know more than he did.

He whispered Brian’s name once more, not to summon anything, not to hold on, but simply to mark the moment. The sound barely left his throat. It dissolved into the quiet almost immediately, as if the room had been waiting to take it.

He stayed there until the streetlights flickered, until the night settled into its own shape, until he could no longer tell whether the heaviness in his chest belonged to the present or to the memory of a warmth already fading.

And somewhere, faint, almost imagined, he felt the outline of the laugh he could no longer hear. Not the sound itself, but the space it used to fill; a hollow that would follow him into every room he entered after this one.

A hollow that had already begun to deepen before the phone rang.

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Before the phone rang, authored by Andrew Allan Chibi, is featured in The Quasar Review’s Tenth Edition (One Year Anniversary).

The heart of my burning stomach

becomes gentle and still,

like my forgotten past:

here, there is no war.

Now the skin of war covers

my curled body,

telling me people do not possess

the power of war,

yet it burns every body,

and even if I lie upon the ice,

it cannot cool the flames.

The bullet in the eyes of horror— see,

it carries prophecy: Death is the child

of the god of fire,

and we shall all return home.

My Stomach and the War Exist in Parallel, authored by Yucheng Tao, is featured in The Quasar Review’s Tenth Edition (One Year Anniversary).

Gertrude had had it. She had put up with the newcomers for as long as she could. Yes, it had been her ancestors’ land forever before the squatters had come, and they were all trespassers by all the rules of natural law. And yes, she could have done things, all sorts of things, unpleasant things to make them want to leave. But she hadn’t, had she? No, she was open-minded and aware that times change and that sooner or later, she would have to share her home with them. Hadn’t she heard from her relatives across the prairie that new constructions were going up all over? Giant machines ripping deep into the earth, erecting all kinds of hideous monstrosities for the interlopers. She had always realized it would be just a matter of time before they invaded her family’s spot by the stream.

They had the loveliest spot. How she loved climbing onto the tallest rock, standing very tall and surveying her property: rolling hills and verdant trees and shrubs as far as the eye could see. She got such pleasure from watching her own kids or those of her neighbors jumping and frolicking across the land in front of her. She loved listening to their cheerful banter and chatter. She felt like the queen of the realm. But that was all before.

Now all their homes had been destroyed and replaced by giant ugly boxes. And that’s not all. The strangers had sprayed all the berries and flowers with poison. Can you imagine? You go to your favorite wild raspberry or blackberry bush to pick delicious berries for breakfast only to find that they have an acrid, obnoxious odor which prevents you from even touching them. The same berry bushes that you fertilized and watched grow to maturity! How would they feel if that happened to their precious petunias? The ones they have been watering and deadheading so carefully for so long, marking the birth of each new bud like a proud new mother watching her babies grow.

Ever since the invaders came with their ugly boxes, everything had been a struggle around here. Now it’s like every time you create anything beautiful, they always serve as an opposing force whose goal it seems to be is to destroy all the beauty you took such pride nurturing.

But that’s not even the worst of it. They are reckless murderers! And they are lazy, never walking anywhere, climbing into their ugly rectangular boxes on wheels and speeding out, not giving a care in the world about who might be walking along the road. And yesterday, yesterday, they went too far. Yesterday, one of them killed Simon. While Simon wasn’t her favorite, he was one of her own. He was family. And you stand up for your family. Gertrude had been brought up right. And now, finally, she had had enough. When they had destroyed her home and planted their box right over it, she had moved. When they had poisoned her beautiful berry bushes, she had found new ones, but this was too much. They had gone too far. What if they had killed one of her babies!?

And so, Gertrude was done playing nice. She climbed up on the old rock, one of the few still standing. She surveyed their acres and acres of vegetable gardens, and she knew exactly what she needed to do. She had never been vengeful before, but this sight of an endless supply of vegetables with their deep roots and underground bulbs made her salivate and turned her into something new entirely. Why, she wouldn’t even need that many others to help her. Just a small group that would be willing to relocate, and honestly who wouldn’t want to sign up for such abundance? Why, she would be doing an entirely new population a favor.

Say goodbye to your vegetables, intruders!

Maria’s (JByrne’s) poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines, including the Beyond Words Anthology. She has received writing awards, including the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest and the 24-Hour Writing Contest, along with a competitive mentorship in the Gordon Square Review.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

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Many years ago, when we moved into the home we had just built, my wife and I installed a bird feeder off the deck on the back of the house, so that she and I could sit in our porch by the deck and watch the birds of all kinds and sizes – from miniscule titmice to large blackbirds – that inhabited the woodlands behind our property.

Among our favorite visitors were the pileated woodpeckers that nested on the hardwood trees that lined the drop from our home to a stream forty feet below. Normally these woodpeckers would find their meals by drilling holes in the neighborhood trees in search of insects inhabiting the trees. However, sometimes a woodpecker would descend on our feeder and peck away at the seeds inside. Woodpeckers often made a mess, since they were very picky as to what seeds they would carry away and which would be dropped to the floor of our deck. We did not mind, because they are beautiful birds, with black bodies, white lines running down the sides of the throat, and vivid red crests in the form of mohawks.

The only discordant note about the woodpeckers was the “wuk, wuk”call they emitted to communicate with each other. Again, their calls were rather infrequent and seldom interfered with the peace of our surroundings. By comparison, the swallows that gathered around the feeder and fought over seeds were far noisier and annoying.

My wife used to spend hours sitting on her armchair in the left corner of the porch, watching attentively the comings and goings of the birds at the feeder and the trips swallow families would make, back and forth, to the small bird house we had hung on the back wall of the deck. After her passing, my bird-watching visits to the porch have become less frequent but I still will fill the feeder with fresh seed every morning and retrieve it at night to protect it from the nighttime incursions of the racoons that roam the woods.

***

The weather had been rather erratic and challenging that year. The winter was unusually snowy and lingered into mid-April, when it was succeeded by a short, frigid spring. In early June, temperatures rose and I was looking forward to a warm and sunny summer. In the middle of the month, however, our area was blanketed by a series of thunderstorms that drenched the neighborhood and, among other things, killed many of the bugs that fed the wildlife. In advance of the first of these storms, I brought the feeder inside and kept it there lest it be blown away by the high winds that would accompany the predicted storm.

It rained all night and, as is usually the case, the sound of the rain lulled me into a heavier than usual sleep. I would have probably rested in bed until midmorning but was awakened at dawn by Maggie’s loud barking. I tried unsuccessfully to quiet the dog down until, now fully awake, I realized that Maggie was responding to an insistent tapping outside our house. The noise did not come from some neighbor working on his yard or a commotion in the woods, but rose from the front of the house, right below my bedroom window.

I went downstairs and rushed out the front door. The tapping persisted, and at first I could not identify its source. Finally, I looked up and realized that there was a woodpecker hanging on one of the wooden eaves at the edge of the roof that extend beyond the walls of my house. The bird was busily pecking at the eave and had already drilled a sizable hole. Apparently, the storm- sodden trees were not suitable for the woodpecker and I had removed the feeder, the backup source of his breakfast.

I became cross at the bird, both for waking me up early and for inflicting noticeable damage on the eave. I cried loudly to scare the woodpecker away but it looked at me once, with what I interpreted as disdain, and continued to drill away.

The woodpecker was sitting about ten feet above ground, in a location that was partially obstructed by a maple tree planted by the front door, so it was not within easy reach of any of the tools that I could have employed to drive it away. Finally, I hooked up my garden hose and directed a thick stream of water at the bird. The force of the water blew the woodpecker away from the eave and drenched its body. “Woody” took off while emitting an indignant wuk, wuk call that I interpreted as a protest or a cry of alarm.

***

That night, a surprise second thunderstorm hit us, unannounced. It was even stronger than the first one, with heavy winds and torrents of rain accompanied by lurid flashes of lightning. The heavy influx of water overflowed my house’s gutters and seeped through several windows at all levels of the house. I anticipated having to undertake expensive repairs to windows, floors, and walls.

Then there was a momentary lull in the storm, an instant in which the winds died down, the thunder ceased, and the rain decreased to a drizzle. An insidious buildup of tension ensued as I expected the tempest to resume at any moment, perhaps with greater force. Then, the silence was broken by an ironic wuk, wuk call from the woodpecker. It seemed to come from a short distance away, though nothing outside was discernible in the darkness.

Had the morning’s visit by the woodpecker been intended as a warning that more misery was on its way? Did my rude termination of the bird’s visit caused it to summon the storm later that day?

I never learned the answers to these questions. All I know is that my former friend the woodpecker was never seen again, at my feeder or anywhere in the surrounding woods, and my life became a little emptier for the loss.

“What happened to Mrs. Slowitz ?”

“She won’t be coming back. I want to get to know your names and a little about you all, so when I call your last name, tell me the first name you’d like me to use. Also tell me one thing about yourself that you feel comfortable sharing.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, if you have a pet or a favorite food. I’ll be making a seating chart, so please be sure to sit in your assigned seat each day.”

“Mrs. Slowitz didn’t make us sit in assigned seats.”

“I’m not Mrs. Slowitz.”

“She let us sit with our friends so we could learn better.”

“You are free to sit with your friends outside of class. In class, you will sit where you are told to sit.”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Can it wait until—”

“I have to go to the bathroom, too.”

“Okay, we’ll have a break soon.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you both have a medical condition?”

“If I tell you I gotta go, then you have to let me go.”

“Me, too.”

“Okay. I’ll call the office on the intercom and have them send security to escort you both to the rest room.”

“Never mind.”

“Mr. Allergy? Your name on the board looks like ‘allergy.’ I’m gonna call you that.”

“If you do that, everyone will think you have dyslexia.”

“You saying I’m stupid?”

“No, I don’t think anyone is wondering about that. Now sit down and be quiet, please. And put that football under your chair.”

“Mr. Allegri? Your fly is open.”

“What?!”

“Made you look!”

“When I call your last name—”

“We know. We tell you the first name we want you to call us.”

“Anderson?”

“You can call me Big Bulge.”

“I’ll call you Harold. Tell us one thing about yourself that you want us to know.”

“I think I just did.”

“Andrews?”

“Lucy. I have a cat.”

“What’s your cat’s name, Lucy?

“Freddy Krueger.”

“Chan?”

“Sam.”

“Can you tell us something about yourself, Sam?”

“I like ice cream.”

“Everybody likes ice cream, Dummy.”

“Rule number one: we don’t say rude, insulting things to each other in this class.”

“How many rules are there gonna be?”

“As many as I decide you need. If you behave badly, you get more rules and consequences. If you show respect, you get respect and privileges. Charbonneau?”

“Marty. I like football.”

“Do you play on a team?”

“Pop Warner.”

“I used to play on a Pop Warner team.”

“This is the last year for our team. They got sued for concussions.”

“All those concussions made Marty mental.”

“One of your friends?”

“Yeah.”

“Heads up, Allergy”

“Augh!”

“Here, Mr. Allegri, take these tissues. Don’t get any blood on me.”

“Thanks, Lucy. Please go to the office and tell the principal that I quit.”

“It needs to be a big gesture,” agreed Henri, a senior board member. “I’m sure we’ll think of something by the St. Louis meet.”

Priscilla’s eyes narrowed. “You misunderstand me. I want him out before St. Louis.”

Henri pulled nervously at his graying hair. “Out? Like, out of competition? But he’s our biggest asset. He’s the biggest reason anyone watches track.”

“He’s not our asset,” corrected Priscilla. “He’s his own asset. You’ve seen his recent interviews. No mention of TFI. No gratitude for making his fame and fortune possible. Just bragging about shaping the future of the sport.”

“But he is the future,” Henri reasoned. “He’s beaten his own record in the 100 meters four times. Nobody else is close.”

“What happens if he actually beats 9.5 seconds in St. Louis? Where do we go from there? He’ll get more endorsement deals, and fans will eventually get bored of a one-man show. We need him out of the picture so we can push a new crew and make the races competitive again. Find a new, more malleable, face to carry on Maxwell’s quest.”

Henri shook his head firmly. “I can’t be a party to that. We’re an impartial governing body. We can’t get upset about not being name-dropped in interviews. Let’s just ride the ratings boost while we can.”

Priscilla took a step closer. “If he runs in St. Louis,” she whispered, “your wife will find out all about you and Christina in Munich.”

“What are you talking about? We went to a conference together. You sent us.”

A faint smile tugged at Priscilla’s lips. “Funny that it took two of you to do one person’s job. Almost like someone planned it to get a bit of leverage. Just remember—a seed of doubt may not bloom right away, but it’s always lurking just beneath the surface.”

“But…but nothing happened!”

Priscilla walked out of the room, pausing at the doorway. “Before St. Louis.”

*

The message was clear: Go home. It won’t happen today. But the eager crowd, lucky enough to purchase the prized tickets, was not leaving until history had been made.

Maxwell Pemberton had been the talk of the sports world since his gold medal victory at the Summer Olympics. He had only gotten faster since then, and the record now stood at a previously unthinkable 9.53 seconds. Following his announcement of a “Drive for 9.5,” the press had covered his training nonstop.

And then the downpour. Even with the event in doubt, the crowd remained. They would see Maxwell Pemberton, and no ill weather would stand in their way.

*

“It looks like you got your wish,” scowled Henri. “He won’t be racing after all.”

“Well, the crowd certainly seems to think that he will. Even after we announced that the event was cancelled, Maxwell has them up in arms. If you had done your job, we would still be in control, not being held hostage by someone who thinks he’s bigger than TFI.”

Henri pulled at his hair again. “So, what do we do? We can’t have them run in unsafe conditions.”

Priscilla tightened her lips. “I’ve been getting calls from sponsors. They say they’ll pull their advertising if we don’t make today’s meet happen.”

“They’ve got us in a lose-lose situation,” Henri observed.

Priscilla laughed scornfully. “You’ve put us in a rough place, but it’s lose-lose-lose for you.” She held up a picture. “Your wife will be getting an envelope of very convincing—and incriminating—pictures in the near future.”

Henri stared at the people in the image. “That’s us! But, we never…”

Priscilla smiled. “Funny what one can do with a little technical knowledge.”

Wordlessly, Henri left the room.

*

Maxwell stood defiantly at the starting blocks, hands on his hips and rain running down his body. Eventually, two stadium employees were sent to hold umbrellas over the 6-foot-10 star, each of them standing on a milk crate. An hour passed, with no change in either the weather or the mood of the crowd.

Hundreds of millions of viewers were waiting at home. The world stood still, awaiting the event while Maxwell continued to stand silently.

*

Henri knocked on Priscilla’s door and let himself in. “I say we run it.”

Priscilla glared at him. “Just let him push us around?”

“No,” Henri sighed. “I think I have a solution that works for both of us.”

*

A makeshift cover was hastily erected over a portion of the track, and staff dried the ground with anything they could find—towels, rags, clothes, and portable fans. Three hours behind schedule, Maxwell and three opponents took their marks. Four more runners had been scheduled; they had left when the race was originally cancelled, but nobody seemed to notice or care.

Despite the delay, every seat in the stands was filled, everyone focused on watching the greatest runner of their time—or any time, for that matter—achieve the unthinkable.

The runners took their positions, and the starter’s pistol split the air. Maxwell’s performance was everything people had hoped for. He quickly outdistanced the rest of the pack and expanded his lead with every step.

As the other runners strove for second place, Maxwell approached the finish line. Just before he crossed, his foot slipped. He flew across the line feet first and landed in a heap. As he rolled onto his back, holding his left knee, the scoreboard flashed his finishing time: 9.47. The crowd jumped and cheered while Maxwell remained motionless on the ground.

His trainer rushed over and examined the knee. He helped Maxwell to his feet and supported him as he posed for the crowd. Even this proved to be too much, and he sat back down. A reporter pushed a microphone in his face. “Maxwell, we just saw you run the fastest race in human history, but what can you tell us about your knee?”

Maxwell grimaced as he looked down at his knee, but he was beaming when he faced the camera. “Look, this race was the singular focus of the past few months, and I don’t want to dwell on the negatives. I want to thank my team, my family, and my fans. We did it!”

Medics came and helped Maxwell onto a stretcher. As he was carried away, Maxwell Pemberton smiled and raised a hand to wave to the audience. Applause broke out again.

A loudspeaker split through the applause: “Upon video review…”

The stretcher stopped.

“The time reported marked when Maxwell Pemberton’s feet crossed the finish line. Under TFI rules, the finish time is measured by when the athlete’s upper body crosses the line. Therefore, Maxwell Pemberton’s time has been adjusted to 9.51 seconds.” The voice continued, but it was drowned out by the booing crowd.

A reporter caught up to Maxwell and thrust a camera in his face. “What do you have to say about this announcement?”

Maxwell was silent for a long time. Finally, he shook his head and said, “They can say what they want.” He paused, but his eyes had lost their familiar glint. “I mean, it’s no big deal. Everyone watching just saw the fastest hundred meters in history.”

More booing came from the audience as the winning time was adjusted on the clock. Maxwell stared at the new time and hung his head. He attempted a smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he told the reporter. “It’s fine, right? We all know the truth. I did what I said I would.” He turned away from the camera and wiped his eyes. Halfway across the stadium, he saw Henri gesturing at the track as a member of the grounds crew bent over it with a towel.

“Wait, what are they doing?” He pulled himself into a sitting position on the stretcher. “What are they trying to hide? Is there something…?”

But, with all eyes on Maxwell, nobody was watching the track. Maxwell and Henri’s gazes met, Henri’s eyes widening as he spotted Maxwell. He looked away quickly, but even at that distance, Maxwell read the guilt in his face.

Another reporter stepped in front of Maxwell, “Is it possible that your career might be ending just one hundredth of a second away from achieving your dream?”

Maxwell waved him aside urgently. “Look, I have to…” But Henri and the grounds crew had vanished into the crowd.

Maxwell’s forced grin was replaced by a look of despair.

The question was taken up by multiple reporters. Was this the end?

Maxwell was speechless. The medics resumed carrying the stretcher off the field, walking faster than before. The final image the stadium’s large video screen showed was a close-up of the fallen hero, tears streaming down his cheeks.

She was only 25 years old the night she was driving home from work in the pouring rain. She wasn’t texting, she wasn’t speeding; she didn’t even have the radio on so that she could concentrate on the road amidst the deluge. Her car started hydroplaning and she lost control. She saw the headlights of the oncoming pick-up truck like a bad cliché and felt every inch of the impact as it collided with the driver’s side door. She felt like a tea cup on the Mad Hatter ride at Disney World that had spun loose and gone wild until everything stopped in a moment that simultaneously felt like seconds and years later. The street lamp, beneath which her car had come to an abrupt halt, cast an almost angelic glow when combined with the rain on the twisted gruesome wreckage of metal and glass.

She had been wearing her seatbelt, but that hadn’t stopped the steering column from crushing her sternum. The chill of the night began creeping in like a phantasm through the places where once had been glass, but the side of her face felt warm. She didn’t understand why until the slowing of her heart started to match the pounding in her head. She became aware that it was getting harder and harder to breathe and with every inhalation she felt like she was drowning.

Then she saw Him. He was there in front of her brighter than the sun despite the dark and stormy night. He smiled and she felt all of her pain dissolve. He emanated peace and love, and she did not feel panicked by the thought of what she was leaving behind. All she wanted was Him; all she needed was to be in His presence and feel His warmth for the rest of eternity. He reached out His hand to her and she couldn’t begin to understand the ecstasy she was feeling – He was inviting her home. She didn’t need to think or consider his offer; it was by pure instinct that she made to reach in kind to Him.

But she couldn’t. She watched in horror as nightmare chains like those of ghoulish Dickens novel wrapped themselves around her torso and held her arms fast. The links were indestructible and forged without flaw. They burned and crushed her far worse than the smashed bones and fluid-filled lungs she suffered from the car crash. She could not turn round but her eyes found the rearview mirror. She saw him leering at her, his eyes once the crystal blue of creation, now the black of the tar dripping from his once golden wings. His smile revealed the razor-sharp teeth of a predator who has won his kill and she saw her bindings in his taloned grip.

“Oh, my child,” came a soft, sad voice. She turned to gaze upon the mortal witness to her earthly demise and beheld a man outside her window. He reminded her of her father, gentle yet his very presence commanded authority. She noted the clerical collar and the well-worn leather-bound book in his hand, which she did not need to read the gold-leaf lettering to know it said “Holy Bible.” He did not ask her if she was okay and he did not tell her she would be, for they both knew such banter was pointless. Instead he wondered, “Would you like to make a last confession?”

The tears that streamed from her eyes in rivulets faster than blood dripping down her face was all the answer he needed. He sat there in silence as she poured out her soul to him in the silence of her heart. She could not speak but her spirit cried out for forgiveness for missing Mass on those Sundays when her girlfriends wanted to get together for brunch instead, for sleeping with her boyfriend of two years and using contraception because she allowed herself to justify it because she loved him and they just weren’t ready to be parents, for every time she uttered the Lord’s name as a curse. Her confession went on and on until at last she had named every link on the chain pulled tight by Satan’s grip.

She bowed her head and the priest knew that she had finished and he gave her absolution. In that instant, she felt as the feather loosed from a bird must feel. The chains were gone and angel from hell was sent screaming back to his domain. She turned her gaze once and forevermore on Him and felt her arms reach toward Him in wild abandon. He welcomed her and she always knew He would, a lost sheep who has finally found her Shepherd.

The priest saw the breath leave her body, but the light never left her eyes. From the moment of her absolution to the end of her life, she was smiling as if she had found a joy that no one could take away. He made the sign of the cross and prayed, “Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord,” as the red and blue lights of the approaching emergency vehicles danced on his face.