It’s a Friday during Lent, so I feed the baby jewel-toned purees—carrots and green peas, avocado, butternut squash. He’s unsatisfied. He wants meat. Chicken meat. Turkey meat. Stewed crockpot meat. Something stringy and shredded; something he could choke on. He squawks at me, mouth outstretched.

Last Lent, I was overly pregnant and iron deficient, but determined to maintain a forty-day meatless existence. My OBGYN recommended supplements; the baby’s father pushed red meat. He made jerky from the various animals he’d killed and presented me with his leathery offerings. I refused. You’re so damned pale, I can see your heartbeat, he said, flogging me with a stick of deer.

To take the baby’s mind off meat, I take him for a walk in the desert. It hasn’t rained in months; saguaros poke out their anorexic ribs. Down, the baby says, this month’s favorite word. He’s only just beginning to sense the true value of having feet, and so he quickly teeters onto his bum. Waa, he cries, the fuchsia bloom of a barrel cactus just out of reach. No baby. Ouchies, I say, once again denying him his deepest desires. The baby cries and cries. I scoop him to my chest, digest his wails.

The man who is the baby’s father accuses me of malnourishing our son.

Just because you’re a hippie, it doesn’t mean he needs to starve.

Just because you’re an animal killer, it doesn’t make my baby a hick.

The man who is the baby’s father grabs the keys to his F-150 and slams the front door.

I hate his words: hippie and starve.

I hate my words: killer and hick.

The baby’s father is a good man. He is a man who sings an amazing catalog of nursery rhymes; he is a man who tiptoes down the hallway when the baby is finally asleep; he is a man who tests the temperature of the baby’s milk on the inside of his wrist; who burps the baby to absolute splatter-patterned completion. He’s a man who stayed when we both know he would’ve been long gone by now, if not for the circumstance. I hunger for our beginnings, listen for some hint of it in his throat. When the baby’s father comes home, I know that I will eat my words.

Meanwhile, the baby sits in his highchair, preoccupied with an orgy of Cheerios™. He sees me and starts to pound his chubby fists on the plastic tray. Cheerios™ tiddlywink into the air. The baby looks like the man who is his father when he is angry.

I’m close enough to smell that his diaper needs changing. The top of his head is translucent; his skull is a river of purple-blue veins that pulse with each scream—Momma, Momma. As I wipe his tiny bum, he transforms into a songbird, cooing. I listen to his song as I unbutton my shirt, never fast enough to satisfy his thirst. He grabs at the tentacles of hair that hang in front of my face; he jibbers something that sounds like Hungry, Hungry, again and again like a refrain.

***

Michele Finn Johnson’s work has appeared in Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, Booth, The Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, Barrelhouse, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her work was selected for Best Small Fictions 2019, won an AWP Intro Journals Award in nonfiction, and has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. Michele lives in Tucson and serves as fiction editor at Split Lip Magazine. Find her online at michelefinnjohnson.com and on twitter at @m_finn_johnson.

Amelia Earhart rebuilds the plane after the crash. She buries her navigator under the soft sand as her pleas for help fizzle over the radio and linger in the air, ignored. When a week passes, she gets into the cockpit and aims the plane at the sky. She passes through the atmosphere unimpeded. (The atmosphere knows it isn’t its place to stop her. There is an order in the universe, and in it Amelia Earhart is above forces of nature and other people’s opinions.)

She discovers gas giants and sun spots. She counts stars and watches them dance. When she’s lonely, she tunes in to the Martian radio programs and listens for her name. (Our celebrity, the Martians say, our very own Amelia.) When she passes the asteroid belt, she wonders if women on Earth wear pants yet.

She’s due to come across Voyager One soon. She doesn’t know it’s the farthest human-made object out in space, but maybe it will remind her of us. Maybe she’ll send us a message when she sees it. Maybe she’ll lean into the radio and say this is Amelia speaking. Maybe she’ll glance back at Earth and notice for the first time how far away it is. Maybe she will grieve the fact she can never return. Maybe she’s always known she never intended to.

***

Noa Covo is a teenaged writer. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Jellyfish Review, Okay Donkey, and Waxwing. Her microchapbook, Bouquet of Fears, was published by Nightingale and Sparrow this July. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.

Maeve walks the CVS aisles high as those Mylar balloons, the ones that break free from their cage or slip loose from a hand, trapped in corners of tall ceilings. She tears the plastic seals off tubes of lipsticks and compacts of iridescent eyeshadows, coloring her face like the wings of a still hummingbird as I run down the aisles after her, inhaling pine and lemon, Skittles and holiday chocolates, skimming the Hallmark cards celebrating lifetime achievements she’ll never imagine: graduations, marriages, births, anniversaries. The pharmacist yells over the counter, Girls, you have to pay for that now. Maeve inspects her newly painted nails she finished in aisle 5b, Alley Cat black, pouts her Jolly Rancher red lips, tugs down her sun-faded top and whispers in his ear with her warm watermelon breath words that throws him back to middle school and hard-ons. We’re both thirteen, but no one ever thinks Maeve is thirteen. Not ever. She turns her head, sticks out her candy-coated tongue. We have the place now. Outside the rain hits sideways and somewhere Maeve’s mother is finishing her shift at Waffle House and will walk across the street to the trucker bar, tend to the drunks and bring one home; somewhere my mother is cooking dinner and will wait for me, looking at the clock, meatloaf growing cold while my father watches football. And all I smell is sun and possibilities when Maeve peels off the seals of scented lotions: coconuts, Hawaii, waves. Do you smell the beach? she inhales, closing her eyes long enough to feel she is slipping away into a riptide. She grabs hair dye. We become blonds and get the fuck out of here. And I nod, thinking I’d follow her anywhere. Maeve, the only girl who’d talk to me in eighth grade. Maeve, the girl my father called white trash. We get the fuck out of here, I repeat. Maeve, the girl who will go missing in two years and never be found, looking like a stained-glass saint under these florescent lights.

***

Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf Top 50, Split Lip Magazine, Lost Balloon, Bending Genres, Barren, Matchbook, Ellipsis Zine, and other publications. More of her work can be found at sabrinahicks.com.

1. That even though I can’t bring myself to get up early (or on time) most days, on the days I do, I can make pancakes and eggs for my wife.
2. That on the days I can’t, she suits up like Diver Dan and brings us coffee.
3. That even though we’ve spent more than half our married life thus far in one room, we got married before all this.
4. That we moved out of that studio apartment last year.
5. That even if it is very small, we have a very small yard.
6. That even though most of that yard is in shade, there is an even smaller patch of light that I can put a garden box.
7. That our dog doesn’t hate us yet.
8. That we don’t hate each other yet.
9. That we don’t hate our dog yet.
10. That even though our dog does hate our garden, we still managed to salvage some lettuce.
11. That that lettuce was edible.
12. That even though when I sit at my desk to work my neighbor can clearly see that I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week, he doesn’t say anything about it.
13. That even though my wife and I are both depressed, we were depressed before all this too, so in a way we’ve been training for this.
14. That we’ve been taught to practice gratitude.
15. That this is an abridged list.
16. That the things left off this list are much more important than the things on it.

***

Steven Genise’s work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Flash Flood, Menacing Hedge, Crack the Spine, and others, and he is the fiction editor for Cascadia Magazine.

The girl in the mirror stares back at me, like she’s angry. She should be me, only she isn’t. I make funny grimaces to make her smile, but she frowns instead. The girl in the mirror laughs and laughs, then says she misses me. She makes it clear she wants me back.

The girl in the mirror looks down, like she can’t stand me. She’s bright, shiny and happy, like I used to be. She’s pretty and funny and everything I was before, unlike me now, unlike this dark figure that stands across her. She’s had enough, she’s bored with me. She turns into an eagle and flies away. I have no shadow now, no reflection. I ask of her to stay, but it’s too late. Even I have abandoned me.

The girl in the mirror waves from afar, like she doesn’t care. She doesn’t recognize me, like I have unzipped me to come out as somebody else. She says she doesn’t want me like that, while she flies high in the sky, and I can’t know what she means, for the mirror doesn’t work, I can’t see me now, can’t face me, but I’ll be like her again, I’ll grow wings, I’ll be an eagle, somehow we’ll meet and we’ll be one again, and we’ll fly out of this, out of this room, out of sorrow, into the vastness of the world, into the sky.

***

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece. A Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as Litro, Jellyfish Review, Spelk, Moon Park Review, Okay Donkey, Bending Genres, Open Pen and others.

The day her husband dies my mother removes the red bindhi from her forehead. She is a widow now. 

The day her husband dies my mother slides her gold and platinum bangles down her arm, one by one: clank, clank, clank.

The day her husband dies my mother sheds all her colored clothes. She wraps a simple, cotton sari around her body.

The day her husband dies my mother starts 13 days of mourning. She prays to the deities for peace because her husband’s soul may still be here.

The day her husband dies my mother stops eating Subway sandwiches. He exerted his last breath, while she was staring at the yellow and green Subway wrapper.

The day her husband dies my mother wails like an infant, curled on his bed, beating his chest, banging her fists to conjure up a magic power to will him to life.

The day her husband dies my mother lifts the black mangal sutra necklace, from her neck.

The day her husband dies my mother leaves their home. She can’t live in the same place where he died.

The day her husband dies my mother leans on her daughters to help her understand; we don’t know what to say.

The day her husband dies my mother breathes a sigh of relief. Four years of hospital stays, doctor visits, medical bills, lukewarm coffee, parking passes, people who talk too loud in waiting rooms, and sleepless nights are over.

Many days after her husband dies my mother begins again. She now has choices. She can leave the kitchen messy, watch television all day, and play poker with her neighbors. She can do this without shame and guilt.

Many weeks after her husband dies my mother has permission to plan for the future. She can commit to plans with her friends and not feel guilty if she smiles, wears extra red lipstick on her lips, and struts her hips with meaning.

A few years after her husband dies my mother says out loud in surround sound, while waving a red, white, and blue flag, the word, “Freedom.” Maybe he can hear her, but she doesn’t care.

***

Rudri Bhatt Patel likes words She is the co-founder and co-editor of The Sunlight Press and on staff at Literary Mama. Her work has appeared in Pidgeonholes, Mothers Who Write, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. 

He drives with coffee between his thighs and steam ghosts up the windscreen. You tell him to outwit the traffic with blackberry jelly inside your llama print knickers. Once the consultant has studied polar images on screen and spooned about inside you, she shakes her head, informs you to expect clots. Back home his kisses taste of rust and hurry, of pâté before you knew it, tequilas with a twist of salt.

The winter your house turns into an aquarium, he leaves. You bale water out of the kitchen, remember to sleep out of the rain. Silverfish rush in the porch whilst you crave junk food and doze out the pukiest days in blankets soft as veal. At the safe mark you paint the nursery the colour field, sort out a roofer, start to desire tea with two sugars. You take her along to clinic –  you’re positive this one is pink –  and when the tightenings come early you think: at least this one is live.

The hospital prescribes the beach to walk the hurt out of you but all you do is sea gaze, estimate volume by cubic inch. He shows up off the cuff, teaches you how to skim stones out into the shrieks. When you brave a dip he holds you at the waist as though you need him to move and points out creatures in the shallows, but you don’t see any when you peer into the green. They breathe through their feet, he says, and the salt water gives your thighs hard, irregular slaps. You think of the midwife: take as long as you need, the second-hand frisk of her fob. You think of starfish hands in miniature: limpid, lilac, how you couldn’t warm them.

***

Rachael Smart writes essays, poetry and short fiction. Recent work has been published at The Letters Page and Unthology 11. Her story ‘The Inconsequential Codes on Lipsticks’ was shortlisted for The Bristol Short Story Prize 2018. She reviews literature for 4Word and STORGY.

At our first meeting, I kneel before you. I offer you my hair, shaved off and tied with a ribbon, a votive for a new beginning.

This is how you say it will go:

Firstly, I will have to die. Then, I will have to trust my body to you. You will wash it. You will have prayers and spells in your mouth. You will place me in a marble coffin. You will mark the coffin with red. You will empty my insides and fill me back in with linen. You will coat me with warm resin. You will wrap each one of my fingers in cloth.

All of this will take 70 days: the dying, the emptying, the filling. I do not care for the jars that will hold my organs. So we agree on a cheaper price. You promise the heart will stay in my chest.

There will be a crossing across the water, you explain. A man will steer the boat. At daytime we will be on the ocean, at nighttime we will be in the land of the dead. It will be very hot on this boat. I will find it difficult to breathe. The man will be a God I have not yet met. He will paint my face and hands and feet red. As he paints me, you will give me male pronouns like I had always wanted. You will etch the words on my marble tomb. In the coffin, with my body made hollow, I will start turning from woman to man. The impossible made true in death.

The problem is, you tell me; the change would not last long enough under normal circumstances. With less experienced priests. This world has its rules, as does the afterlife. You cannot break them without a price so this is how it will go:

You will do to me whatever you want in the coffin because I will be neither here nor there, neither male nor female, neither red nor blue, neither dead nor alive, and I will be very scared. You do not tell me just how scared. But you promise that the results will be worth it. No one will question me ever again. No one will have a doubt.

You caress my shaved head and take my gold coins. You say, go to sleep. You say, surrender if possible. You say that I am a bare horizon. You say, know this: in your new body nothing will feel too terrifying, or too beautiful, ever again.

And limb by limb I stretch out this tired self.

***

Defne Çizakça is a writer and editor based in Istanbul. She has taught in Turkish prisons, Scottish museums, and Argentinian bookshops, and is currently working on a novel about anarcha-feminists. She can be found on Twitter: @defnecizakca.

Faith stands in the back yard, listening to the tree limbs creak, wondering what it would feel like to have one drop on her neck. She thinks she’d like to feel all the pain this world has to offer her at once. The unknown is startling, a shadow that creeps around her house, like the whispered names of the unborn brothers she’s never met. No documents. No pictures, but she can feel their presence. She finds them in the bent tip of the bladed grass, on the spectral shimmer of lighted chrome bumpers. Hot to the touch.

Since they hide and flitter, she tries conjuring up a pony, hands waving magically, lips mumbling phrases starting with Hocus Pocus and ending with divorce. The last one made her dad disappear except for every other weekend. The pony she wants more than her dad, and though this makes her feel guilty, she doesn’t give up until a pair of squirrels chase each other around the base of the tree and into the skinny arms that continue to hold up the sky.

She’s very interested in finding the seams of nature, to report the unraveling of the universe.

She waits for it to fall, for a star to settle next to their patio furniture, for one of her wishes to come true. Nature won’t bend to her will no matter how long she stares, eyes dry, until she cries, her mother’s voice a one-sided conversation with her best friend, Becky, who her father calls a drunk. But only on the weekend, only while sipping from an amber glass bottle that spins the light across the ceiling, a smoky planet she can’t reach but would love to visit.

When she tells this to her father, he talks about astronauts, the way their space ships blow up like firecrackers, how space is an idea, a way for scientists to gossip and spend his money.

Faith says she’d like to spend his money. Puts her hand out and taps her foot. Horses don’t just show up in the back yard, you know?

He holds his hand above hers, and she tries to ignore the way it shakes.

Can you feel that? he asks.

Yes and no, she wants to say, not sure which one is the key.

Some day I’ll teach you about electricity. I’ll tell you about life and disease, and the rot caused by oxygen.

Does it hurt? she says.

Only as much as you want it to, he says.

She waits, hand poised, wanting something to appear, something flashy and bright, anything but these lies aimed like streaking meteors meant to make her feel better.

***

Tommy Dean is the author of Special Like the People on TV from Redbird Chapbooks. His work has appeared in The Bull Magazine, The MacGuffin, New World Writing, Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. His story “You’ve Stopped” was chosen by Dan Chaon to be included in Best Microfiction 2019. It was also included in Best Small Fictions 2019. Find him @TommyDeanWriter.

I date a man who has wings; a man who can fly.

“I’ll set you up with a pair and we’ll travel together,” he says. “I want to show you the world.”

Faint remnants of exotic places he’s visited cling to him. He smells of green grass and treetops, of apples and walnuts, of pinecones and snow, of ocean and sand.

When he wraps his arms around me, I hear the rattle of wings as I nestle in the cloak of feather- warmth. I listen to his heart under my ears, more rapid than mine, reassuring in its strength and pace.

He gazes into my eyes, and I’m swept into their sharp, intense brilliance.

Sometimes unwelcome thoughts arise―a yearning for arms with warm skin, a wish for a sharp knock on the door instead of a swooping entry through the window. I run my fingers through the rich plumage and remind myself of what attracted me in the first place.

As promised, he brings me wings. They’re in the colors of a peacock’s feathers, iridescent turquoise, blue, and navy.

“You’ll be gorgeous in the sky,” he says and takes me out to the mountaintop on a sunny day. “Come,” he says. “Fly with me.”

“How?”

He lifts and flaps the broad span of his wings. “Like this,” he says, and his feet float off the ground. “Follow me!” The words drift in the wind.

I flap and jump, flap and jump; I cannot defy gravity.

When I look up, he’s soaring in the distance, his shadow an oblong patch on the side of the mountain.

I dance, wings shimmering on my back. He won’t turn around.

If he ever returns, I can tell him what I now know—peacocks are the male of the species; they cannot fly distances.

***

Sudha Balagopal’s short fiction appears in, or is scheduled to appear in, Split Lip Magazine, Lunate Fiction, Bangor Literary Magazine, Pidgeonholes and Vestal Review among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fiction and appears in the Wigleaf Top 50, 2019.