Milk Candy Review

Had I not napped in the breeze of my office building arcade, I would’ve read his text messages before it was too late.
Had I lunched in the cafeteria with colleagues, I would’ve been at my desk the last time he called. Or someone could’ve found me.
Had I been content working in the neighborhood and not ambitiously sought office work in a slick downtown granite building, I might’ve been home for lunch when he needed me.
Had I landed a higher-paying job, I could’ve sent him to a better school. Or a therapist. Or off to summer camp to explore the very interests he had to hide from bullies at the same massive suburban high that I endured. Though, 25 years ago, the final bell freed you from the mean kids. They didn’t follow you home in your device, keeping you awake with the pings of notifications for you, or worse, anxiety over notifications you didn’t receive but talked about you.
Had I negotiated more vacation days, we might’ve been on vacation together. I would’ve been with him this afternoon [substitute ‘that afternoon’ for later recitations of these and future additions to this list of regrets]. We could’ve been in the mountains without reception, where we could lay out in a field at night and he could name the constellations we cannot discern in the suburbs. Or on a lake where we could swim away from the stress of school. Or on a farm where he might meet a country vet and ask all the questions about horses I cannot answer. He could follow a farrier around and see how horses are shod. He could have fed and mucked and maybe even ridden horses, instead of being at home alone with his thoughts and the pings of his phone.
Had I not been so very tired, I could have taken him to the planetarium after work some days, or to a stable on the weekends. I should have listened to the early calls for help. I should not have assumed things would get better, that we would get through it. If only I had been awake, been in the right place, been there for him, been attuned to who he was. If only I had locked the medicine chest, sent him to the library while I was at work, checked in more frequently, put my cell phone on disturb. If only I had filled the house with books on stars and horses, given him whole other worlds he could live in instead of the miserable and temporary but all-consuming high school omniverse. If only I had thought of everything, when it still mattered.

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Lilith Acadia has writing in The Kenyon Review, New Orleans Review, Potomac Review, trampset, and elsewhere. An associate professor of literary studies at National Taiwan University, she lives with her wife and hound in the ‘literature mountain’ district of Taipei. Connect at acadiaink.com or IG / bluesy: @acadialogue

We recently published Austin Blaze’s insightful “Are You Happy?”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) The father’s struggle with depression here is so heartbreaking — his enduring pain, his concern for his daughter, his struggle to answer her question “correctly.” Do you think he will be able to forgive himself if (when) this disease affects his child too?|
I’d like to think so. Depression can be isolating and hideous and excruciating, and the possibility of your child inheriting this pain is almost unbearable. And yet I think there is something beautiful in the father’s struggle with culpability. Though he is not responsible for (potentially) passing on the disease that was passed on to him, he is responsible for guiding his daughter through it. Helping her understand it, come to terms with it, cope with it. Depression is such a lonely experience, so difficult to articulate to others. Especially those closest to us, for fear of implicating them in your suffering or infecting them with it. But a shared disease also presents an opportunity for closeness, intimacy, connection. That is my hope for these two characters–that their relationship is strengthened by their common weakness.

2) ” There’s plenty of time to contemplate and formulate. To parent better than you were parented.” That idea of time here — that brief blaze of hope that time could fix things, protect the daughter. Despite it all, the father will do his best for his child, like he does in this story. Do you think she will understand that?
Again, I’d like to think so. Most people face depression alone. Even–perhaps especially–those with a family history. This father, like all fathers, will inevitably fuck up. He will say the wrong thing, in the wrong way, at the wrong time. He may even, in his attempt to empathize, make his daughter’s experience too much about himself. But this father is committed to providing his daughter with something that was never made available to him, whether honesty or vulnerability or even just a physical paternal presence. Depression has a tendency to take hold in adolescence, when children may not be overly receptive to big, sit-down, believe-it-or-not-I-know-exactly-what-you’re-going-through conversations. But I tend to think these capital-T Talks are far less significant than the preceding years of thoughtful, attentive parenting (or lack thereof). So yes. Though I’m not much of an optimist, I think the daughter will, in time, understand.

She doesn’t know what antidepressants are or that they stopped working years ago. She has no idea that just the other night, as she and her mother waited patiently for takeout, you sat idling at a green light, food going cold in the passenger seat, hoping a runaway truck would free you from your failure. To her, death is just what happens at the beginning of Bambi, Finding Nemo, The Lion King. She doesn’t understand that, for two of her great-grandparents, it couldn’t come soon enough. The forever sleep. The big bye-bye. She hasn’t yet discovered that this same devil likely lives inside of her. Will you sit her down, trace the rot through her family tree, or would that be cruel and fatalistic? Will you give her space and monitor her symptoms, or is that too reactive, too risky? It’s still a ways off, you tell yourself. There’s plenty of time to contemplate and formulate. To parent better than you were parented. Truth is, she doesn’t even mean it that way. Her question. Her way of asking whether you have forgiven her for pissing her pants or pulling the cat’s tail or painting her face with peanut butter. But you hear it how you hear it. And so you tell her yes, of course. You are happy. Daddy is happy. So very happy. Of course. Of course of course of course.

***

Austin Blaze is a writer from Northern California. His fiction has appeared in Hobart, BULL, Red Rock Review, and Superstition Review. He received his MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. You can read more of his work at austintblaze.com.

We recently published Ly Faulk’s stunning “It Happened One Summer.”

Here, we ask them two questions about her story:

1) This is such a momentous summer for the characters! … or is it that all summers are momentous and it is only summers like this one that we (and the characters) remember?
My experiences of summer could best be described as “stuck in the middle of time that seemed to go nowhere slowly.” The days crawl by and although many momentous moments happen, the edges are all smoothed over by the vast quantities of time (it used to seem) that comprise summer and can become a blur. It’s only looking back that you realize, “wait a minute, life happened to me and I barely knew it!” I think these characters had a more memorable summer than most, but I bet if you asked them at the time what was new, they would have likely shrugged and said “nothin’.”

2) I love that imagery of adulthood “gobbling” these children up. It really does that, doesn’t it! Do you think, looking back on this memorable summer, they might understand better how close it truly was? 
Oh, definitely! Adulthood creeps in in so many ways before we’re ready. This group of kids experience hardships and some seem to take on adult problems before their time. I think many kids yearn to grow up, to be free of parental control, to try on the vestiges of adulthood. I certainly did. It’s only in hindsight that we realize that childhood is finite and so much shorter than we thought. Even in an imperfect childhood, there is an ineffable quality that gets lost as we become adults. We’re blind to it at the time and we can never get it back once it’s gone. 

Tommy broke his leg and Amanda licked the wound where the bone poked through the skin on a dare before anyone ran for help. The twins, Jim and Diane, moved to a different city and no one saw them again, not until we were all grown up and nearly unrecognizable to each other, and to ourselves, and by then no one had anything to say to them. They were strangers. Phylis told her mom she liked girls and her mom slapped her face so hard, her cheek had a welt like a watermelon for weeks. Phylis never told her mom anything else ever again. Somewhere, in the depths of the forest out behind the middle school. Kimberly let Adam finger her and then lied about it when he told the whole school what happened. Kenneth knocked out a tooth on Chris’s trampoline and Kenneth’s dad threatened to sue Chris’s dad and the city and trampoline’s manufacturer although he did none of those things in the end and Kenneth talked with a lisp until the tooth got replaced by a fake one. Someone said a boy drowned in Lake Downing but no one ever met the kid who supposedly died so that one might just have been a rumor. Danica ran away from home because she was tired of being knocked around by her old man and lived in the library for three days, hiding in the bathroom at closing time and sleeping behind the periodical desk at night. When she got found out, they dragged her outside despite her screams and banned her for life. Defeated, she went back home to her father who gave her the whipping of a lifetime. Ralph spent the whole summer in summer school trying to memorize the dates of important battles and the names of the important people who fought them. He didn’t know it, but he would grow up to be a soldier himself and all dates and names would leak out of his head when the percussion grenade landed next to him. Clarissa liked to read and would carry a book with her everywhere she went but that was the summer that she started to write her own. Owen found her notebook with her careful, even script and threw it in a mud puddle which is how Clarissa learned to kick a man in the balls when he was being a jerk. The days stretched out before us and behind us and here we were stuck in the middle of time that seemed to go nowhere slowly. School was a distant dream on either horizon. Adulthood was an even further horizon but one that would gobble us up so much faster than we ever could have known, the memory of the taste of watermelon bubblegum still fresh in our mouths.

***

Ly Faulk (they/she) is a queer writer, artist, and an all-around weirdo. They are the author of Hippie Speedball and Sick Sad Queer. Learn more about their writing at lyfaulk.com.

We recently published Joshua Wetjen’s brilliant “Coaches.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) The narrator here hints at her loneliness, but doesn’t fully admit to it. Do you think if she could, she would look for a coach? Or something (someone?) else?
I do think she would look for a coach, if she could. I think she envies the small children in the simplicity of what they get playing t-ball. They get to feel lost and distracted without consequence and when they get direction, it’s obvious. My son has been in a lot of youth sports and I’ve noticed how the older he gets, the more independence he and the other players are allowed. At the same time, he’s considered a good player if he follows the coach’s direction. Life in general is not like that. I think the narrator realizes there is no coach for adulthood and that there is no direct hand to reassure her in every step, nor does she have that sense of nurturing companionship. She is lonely but grown-ups aren’t supposed to say they’re lonely and certainly it would take a saintly person to understand another’s loneliness and swoop in to help. I actually think that happens. There’s a lot more kindness out there than it sometimes seems, but admitting to your own loneliness still takes a lot of courage!

2) The parents’ relationship is a point of comparison and potential grief for the narrator. The sterility of their lives, the goodness. Is that something the narrator wants for herself?
I think the narrator wants what her parents have but also wants the adventure of life and wonders if it’s possible to have both. I’ve seen a lot of people worry about life becoming too predictable and routine as they begin committed, domestic relationships. I’ve also heard people complain about their parents’ relationship, wondering if that’s what happens when people commit to each other, that their personal dreams have to die, or that they’ll be stuck in cycles of resentment and bickering like their parents. I think the narrator would be unwilling to accept a long term relationship if it seemed like it was going to be boring. She’s a little stuck before the coach arrives at her house. I think her little fling with the coach could give her the sense that connection is possible, and is also a point of adventure for her, and potentially a way of going about adulthood which breaks her out of her funk. She can’t be like the kids on the field but she can open herself up to things. She also may not get to have what her parents did, and she probably doesn’t want exactly that. So she’s going to have to write her own script on what it means to be an adult. That’s scary but also freeing. I think she’s afraid that accepting that means she’ll not have the “goodness” her parents did. All of it is scary, but in a good way. She’s also potentially writing a new script for what “goodness” is.

The coaches made me swoon, and that was enough. All eight of them, the number required to keep a game of t-ball running. The children may have had a batting helmet drowning their face, steps unsure as a newborn colt’s, sighs full of portent, been slumped, or have just surrendered to the joy of a cloud of dust, or to the pleasure of an open field and a darting wild rabbit, but the t-ball coaches refused to yell or even curse under their breath. The coaches patted the player’s backs, spoke in warm tones, made liberal use of the term “bud,” and met the bewildered, frightened, or simply exhausted child at eye level and reminded the little person that the moment is difficult, but things would soon turn in their direction.

There in the parking lot, I decided to be different. I had an opening. A loss of ten to nothing. The cute coach trudged in naked sorrow. And he knew what I was doing. He stopped in front of me.

“Rough game,” I said. I smiled and cocked my head.

“Thanks for coming out,” the cute coach said.

“I like to see you guys,” I said. “To see you. You’re good with these kids, with my nephew, Evan.”

“Evan,” the coach said. “Yes. I think I heard that.”

“Too bad,” I said. “About the loss.”

“Only a game,” the cute coach said.

I didn’t go the next week. I worked late. After, I turned in to my driveway and walked into my house, tidied up, found a bottle of wine, opened it, poured a glass, sat on my couch, and put on some old jazz LPs of my father’s.

I got a little sad. Sad because my parents’ marriage was so good. I felt alone, and sad because their shrunken life in the nursing home seemed pleasant, but also sterile, and my dad was sick, and my mother would be alone.

I listened to Nina Simone sing. I put on my bathrobe, with nothing underneath. I sized myself up in the mirror before wrapping the robe around me. I liked what I saw—my belly, thighs, waist, breasts. I know the cute coach had noticed them.

I thought a lot about the cute coach and texted him.

I waited, sipping the wine, and I waited some more, finally laying down on the couch. I saw the coach’s pick up pull into the driveway.

He looked around, shut the driver’s side door, and strode to my front doorstep and rang the bell. Before opening the door, I downed my wine. I hadn’t had lunch or dinner, and it made everything a little blurry. I needed to feel a little blurry and unsure. I had no guide. I needed encouragement. What I needed was a coach.

***

Joshua Wetjen is a high school English teacher living in Minneapolis and working in St. Paul. When not grading or chasing his two children, he likes to tinker on his jazz guitar and try new restaurants with his wife. His work has appeared in The Pinch, Newfound, and Yalobusha Review among other publications.

We recently published Elizabeth Erbeznik’s shining “Outside.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love how subtly the narrator reveals the difference between her life and her employers’ — that image of the mother telling her children “gold bars,” and how they can sit on their money “like dragons” is so brilliant! There’s a sense of envy here, but also … there isn’t. How do you think the narrator sees her employers?
I kept trying to experiment with different titles to this story, but “Outside” was always the one that seemed to capture the complex relationship that the narrator has with her employers’ world. She is not a part of it, but she can get through the gates, she can pass through the houses. In contrast, her employer is stuck (at least within the limits of this very short story), like a dragon, guarding her treasure. And while I wouldn’t say that my narrator doesn’t feel some envy or even resentment towards her employer, I imagine that there’s some relief mixed in with these feelings. She might want the gold, but I don’t think she wants to be trapped as the dragon – and it seems hard to have one without becoming the other. 

2) The contrast, too, between the narrator’s children as they ride in the car with her and exist in this momentary joy and the children of these wealthy families, sent off to treatment centers, is so stark and powerful! There are disadvantages in both worlds, but do you think the narrator’s children are, perhaps, luckier?
I think that they’re luckier, yes, because they’re closer to the warm, deeply human, imperfection of their mother. My narrator can’t be bothered to drive through the real streets of holiday displays. She’s tricking her kids into thinking that this fancy neighborhood is just as good. But she’s watching their reactions, making sure that they’re enjoying themselves. Life in the big houses seems colder to me. There’s more physical space, so the people within them are more alone. When working on this story, I kept seeing these houses as illuminated stages – with a version of life being performed in front of the bright curtain-less windows and a different version playing out behind scenes in the private spaces. I can’t imagine children thriving in that kind of disconnect.

We waited until it was dark, entirely dark, before leaving to look at lights. There are streets that everyone knows about, streets full of stop-and-go cars that crawl past colorful yards, impossible to pass. But I punch in a code and drive through gates, turning onto streets that glow. If the kids wanted neon displays of candy canes, snowmen who never melt, reindeer and sleighs flying across lawns, they don’t complain. They seem happy in the backseat, faces pressed against the windows, staring at strings of gold lights stretched across houses I clean. Pretty buildings, they say, staring at houses that are too big, too fancy, to fit into their vocabulary for home. Gold bars, one of my employers is always saying on the phone with her adult children, on voicemails when they don’t pick up. She wants to turn their money into gold, to lock it up, to keep it safe, so they can sit on it like dragons. As we drive past these houses at night, they look like elegant lairs, lit from within by treasure. Trespass is a word my kids don’t know, can’t attach to themselves as we roll through the streets and look. Lamps shine in picture windows, illuminating private places, but I know what these houses hide. I’ve seen the cupboards full of pills, the unmade beds in separate rooms, the bills sent by treatment centers for kids who are supposed to be spending the summer at camp. If there are shadows, they stay hidden on these streets where even the trees look gilded, bathed in dragon gold. The car is warm, almost too hot since the kids took baths before we left and their hair was still wet so I cranked up the heat, but these bright streets remind me that I’m always outside, where the lights don’t reach, moving unseen past guarded fortresses, past sharpened claws.

***

Elizabeth Erbeznik is a writer and educator with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her stories and poems have appeared in Best Small Fictions, Anacapa Review, Catamaran Literary, Los Angeles Review, Terrain.org, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Her forthcoming prose chapbook The Oboe is a Duck was selected for The Florida Review’s 2026 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award. Originally from Northern California, she lives with her family in Austin, TX. 

We recently published Angela James’ cutting “Before Turning the Gun on Himself.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story.

1) I like how the story starts after what happens next door — their story is over and now our narrator’s begins. And yet the neighbors’ story lingers. Do you think the narrator’s life would turn out differently if the neighbors’ tragedy had never happened?
Yes, I see that tragedy as ultimately prompting the narrator to reject the sexist scripts set out for her. I didn’t specify a year for the murders but I mentioned Love Boat, which ran from the late 70s to the mid 80s. A cousin of mine became a police officer in the 80s and I remember him describing how the new officers were discouraged from laying charges over spousal abuse. So many sexist attitudes and controlling behaviours were accepted as traditional and manly, and are not always recognized as red flags even now, decades later. I imagine the tragedy would have been at the back of the narrator’s mind as a possible end point as the boyfriend escalated his control and abuse. 

2) The mother’s reaction to the boyfriend’s behavior is such a familiar one — that coddling, that excusal of his actions, that inability to understand her daughter’s. But do you think her reaction is shaped by the neighbors’ story, as well? That, perhaps, part of this reaction is out of fear?
I think the tragedy would have been seen by the mother as proof of her belief that women by nature have the potentially deadly burden of managing men’s emotions. When writing the story, I imagined a lot of the mother’s behaviours would still have been present, even without the tragedy. I know so many women who fought lifelong battles with their mothers over these issues. I remember a friend nicknaming her mother “The Defender of Men” which was surprisingly effective in making the mom think before she would interject in support of yet another badly behaved man.