No one else can see them. No one except the Daughter, that is. In her Family, there is a Daughter and a Son, both quirky and opposite of each other, and there is also a Mother and a Father, who have a toxic relationship that never gets addressed. None of them look alike, but that isn’t addressed either. They live in a fake House with a fake living room, fake kitchen, fake bathroom, and they sleep in two fake bedrooms. Every time one of them says or does something funny, strange, unknown voices off in the distance laugh. If someone forgets what to say, they start over. Every few minutes, they take a break and freeze in place for a few minutes for an unknown reason until they continue where they left off. Every half hour, whatever superficial, trivial conflict plagues them that day gets wrapped up in a neat little bow. They aren’t allowed to dress themselves, eat their food, or even go into some rooms of their House.

And no one except the Daughter can see the cameras that film them, or the crew who wields the cameras, or the audience that laughs at them, or the people who dress them, or any of the other people in the studio outside of their House. Her Family is blind, unaware, and for a while, the Daughter was too. Her whole life, she had known that something was wrong. She had a deep discomfort with the fake smiles, got chills whenever she heard the laughter from the unknown source, and had a strange feeling that she was being watched but had no proof. She felt a buzzing under her skin. She was so sure something else was wrong, but no one else in her Family seemed bothered, so she thought she was going crazy. There was something churning low in her stomach, a gut feeling that there was something more than this, or maybe just the hope for it, until one day, there they were. Right in front of her, clear as day: cameras. Big, black cameras, many of them, pointed right at her. She wanted to reach out and touch them, but she wasn’t allowed to cross to the other side of the room. Like a dog with an invisible fence, she was trapped.

Once she saw the cameras, she couldn’t unsee them. She wondered how she didn’t notice them before. She started forgetting what she was supposed to say, being late, and missing her cues. She was distracted, only half-there. She found herself spacing out for hours at a time, too focused on exploring the other half of the studio to care about what she was supposed to be doing. Her eyes roamed over the dark lights and long cables, taking in the important-looking people moving about and talking in what seemed like a secret code.

She searched and scanned, until her eyes landed on a window, small and sitting high on the wall on the other side of the studio. Unlike the windows in her House, which were flat and fake and didn’t open, this one was cracked open just a little, and beyond it, she could see the outside world. That confirmed it for the Daughter. Her life wasn’t real. Realness was out there, and she had to get to it.

The first thing she did was tell her Family, but they didn’t believe her. Their eyes were empty. She tried to show them, but they didn’t see. Their eyes were unmoving. But while her Family might not be able to see, the Daughter could. She could see and she knew. She knew that life wasn’t situational or comedic. Nothing was ever wrapped up in a bow every half hour. Life was a mudbath, a cesspool, a landslide, both the shipwreck and the lovers clinging to a raft. It was shitty and short and unfair and torturous and long, but it was real, and it was out there somewhere if only she could get to it. She didn’t want to leave her Family (even if they were fake, they were still the only people she knew and she wanted them to be free too), but she didn’t see what kind of a choice she had. She had to get out.

She tried to escape multiple times. The first time, someone caught her and stopped her before she even left the fake House. They threatened to punish her if she ever tried again. The second time, she made it to the window, but was dragged back to the House before she could figure out how to open it. The third time, instead of acting on impulse, she devised a plan, one that was smarter and would assure her escape.

When her Family was on one of their breaks, just standing around and doing nothing in their house, the Daughter made sure no one was looking at her, then made a beeline towards the window. She made it almost the whole way there before someone noticed her. They called her name, but she kept walking. They grabbed her arm but she shoved them off. She pushed the window open. Hands reached out to grab her, but she fought, twisting and shaking and scratching, until she lifted her entire body up and wriggled her way through the window. At the top, she turned around for one last look, and saw her Family staring at the scene with their empty, unmoving eyes. She could only hope they really saw her, and would one day maybe join her. She jumped and landed hard on the ground. Head-spinning, pulse racing, it took her a while to get accustomed to her surroundings. She sat up. What was that she was sitting on? Grass. What was that shining above her? Sky. What were those robots moving around? People.

Grass. Sky. People. She was outside. She made it out. Not unscathed, but still, she has made it out. For the first time in her life, she was free. For the first time in her life, she had a life.

The fake Daughter was written off the show, probably given a job offer in another country or a sudden addiction arc that landed her in rehab or something fake like that, if the Daughter had to guess. But she didn’t know exactly what happened, and she didn’t care either, because she was free. She never had to concern herself with that show anymore. She had a life to live.

Content Warning: This piece discusses homophobia, discrimination, and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ people in Africa. It includes depictions of social and familial rejection, historical references to medical abuse, and job loss due to sexual orientation. It directly references suicide. Readers who may be affected by these themes are encouraged to engage with care.

Homosexuality is a hot button in Africa today. Much of the fervour, however, is fueled by demagogic politicians who want to distract their subjects from the real issues that matter, like the runaway corruption and nepotism. Many politicians today are in office because they are riding high on the rampant homophobia they’ve created and stoked. Some use phrases such as “Homosexuals are more lethal than all natural disasters put together,” and then go ahead to implement draconian laws such as life imprisonment.

I had a gay friend who was in the closet most of his short life. My friend Kamara (not his real name) and I were as close as brothers. Although we shared many happy times together, I noticed that many of the other children found him strange. Even in nursery school, he always wanted to be the mother when we played house. As the years progressed, I observed that he was acutely conscious of his appearance. I remember rebuking him often for spending so much time in front of the mirror.

When we got older and enrolled at the same boys’ boarding school, Kamara made the rest of us look like a bunch of greasy mechanics. His clothes were always the cleanest, and he took a shower every day. He had long, polished nails that always got him in trouble with the teachers, and he loved to plait his hair on weekends. Sometimes, when he walked, one would think he was strutting on a catwalk. Some boys disliked him at first because he was different, but they gradually came to like and appreciate him for how unique he was.

When we talked about girls, he always seemed bored. When one of the boys managed to smuggle a dirty magazine into school, Kamara was never among the hordes fighting to get a look at it. In grade eleven, Kamara and I were both appointed dorm captains. (There were ten dormitories with about a hundred students each.) He was the Kilimanjaro captain, and I was the Ruwenzori captain. Every Saturday, we did general cleaning of the dorms, and there was a competition organized by teachers to see which dorm was the tidiest. Kilimanjaro almost always won among the ten dorms.

Being a dorm captain came with benefits. Our school had a policy of random locker searches and pat-downs by teachers. Dorm captains were exempt from this degrading ordeal. (Nothing is more uncomfortable than one’s chemistry teacher feeling his underpants while checking for contraband.) As such, many students would hide illicit goods such as marijuana, snuff, and dirty magazines in the lockers of dorm captains—for a small fee, of course. Dorm captains were also entrusted with making duty rosters, and some wealthier students bribed us handsomely to be exempted from chores such as scrubbing the dorm floors. Kamara was the only upright dorm captain who did not allow such bribes.

Kamara and I attended the same college and shared a room. Seeing that he had no interest in wooing women, I finally realized that my best friend suffered from what was called the “white man’s disease.” I went out one evening to a party and came back with two tipsy, attractive ladies, one for me and one for him. Kamara broke down in tears, and I had to kick the girls out. He finally shared with me his long-standing secret.

“Why on earth would you choose to be gay?” I asked.

Kamara stared daggers at me. “Tell me, why would anyone choose to be gay?”

“Being gay in Africa is like living with leprosy,” he continued. “Why would I wish that on myself?”

“I just don’t get it,” I said. “We were brought up in the same village and attended the same schools. Where did you lose a step?”

“I didn’t lose a step anywhere. I have always been this way,” Kamara said. “Think about it. Who would choose to be a homosexual and go through all the hatred, danger, and ridicule that come with this label?”

Seeing that Kamara was making sense, and remembering all of the distinctive mannerisms he had shown since childhood, I did my research in the coming weeks and came to realize what a fool I had been. I apologized profusely.

I read how doctors in the past had subjected gay people to practices intended to cure them. In South Africa, during the 1970s and 1980s, gay and lesbian people were subjected to sex-change operations, chemical castration, and electrotherapy delivering shocks so severe that “[subjects’] shoes flew off.” These individuals were left mutilated but still gay.

After college, Kamara and I were scattered by the wind in pursuit of earning a living, but we spoke regularly over the telephone. In his mid-twenties, Kamara’s parents began pressuring him to settle down. “This Christmas, do not come home without a lady in your arms,” his mother would say, “and if her belly is protruding, all the better.”

I would visit the village from time to time, and I happened to bump into Kamara’s mother. She would whisper into my ear, “You have been friends with my son since childhood. You know how shy he is in the presence of ladies. Why don’t you introduce him to some of your lady friends, my child?”

“I will, mother,” I would lie. I knew she would cry out that demons had possessed her son if I revealed the truth to her. I tried dropping clever quotations if the subject ever came up in general, suggesting that homosexuality is not as simple as she assumed. But, generally, I held my tongue in her presence. It was not my place to shove Kamara out of the closet.

A week before Christmas 2021, Kamara’s boss got wind of his sexual orientation and fired him. Kamara went home without a woman in his arms. Everyone was disappointed but not as much as when he told them it was because he was gay and was tired of living a lie. He said he hoped they would accept him as he was. His father shouted that it would have been better had his mother given birth to a frog than to a son like him who brought such shame to the family. “Get out and never come back,” his father screamed. “The day you hear me call you my son again, take my name and give it to a dog.”

Kamara hanged himself that New Year’s Eve in a motel room in another part of the country. On that day, Africa lost a gifted young man. He would have made a fine leader—something greatly needed on our continent. But the sin of hateful ignorance has robbed us of his talents and presence.

My hope is that African nations begin to shed their draconian treatment of gay people. While progress is being made in certain nations, homosexuality is still legally punishable by death in countries such as Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, and areas of Somalia controlled by Islamist groups. (In a number of other countries, homosexuality can be punished by life imprisonment.) Regardless of the particular individual laws on the books across Africa, the widespread shame and ostracism wielded against gays has meant that Kamara’s fate is not unique.

Homosexuals are like poetry. They are hated simply because they are not understood. Homophobic sentiment is widespread in the continent. Social discrimination, widespread violence and “corrective” rapes and murders have been documented. This forces many LGBTQ+ individuals to live in hiding, exacerbating their mental health.

We must earnestly treat each other as human beings rather than allow hatred to give way to the worst of our nature. To fail to do so will result in so much more suffering for people like my dear friend.

I wonder if my grandfather ever tires of people whispering around him. If their hushed tones grate on his deafened ears, or if he has enjoyed living his life in silence. He must know by now, after all these years, that what is said under one’s breath is likely something he would not want to hear anyway. Maybe, in that sense, our whispers protect him. I think it is more likely, however, that they are a tool my family and I have always used to protect ourselves from his steadfast beliefs. If we say something quietly the first time, we can assess how it sounded out loud and then make our best guess as to whether his ears would have interpreted our sentences differently. We can rethink, rephrase, and then speak up, ready for a response this time. Ready for a conversation that won’t end in questioning. In anger.

Even when my grandfather wasn’t yet elderly and small, his hearing hadn’t deteriorated, and he wore clothes apart from the same shabby sweater and dress pants I now see him in almost every day, pieces of my life had always been shushed in his presence. I grew up stepping on thousands of eggshells trying to be myself around him, trying to say only the right things and withhold all the wrong information, always afraid that my words would betray me. Eventually, I became taciturn. I figured out that it’s much easier to sit in comfortable silence with my Grampa than to constantly worry about saying something incriminating in front of him. But it’s for this reason, obligatory quiet, that I don’t think he has ever had any idea who I really am.

…

I was six years old the first time I learned to shut my mouth in front of my grandfather. It was the week before Easter, and I was at my grandparents’ house, painting eggs. I’d given up apple juice for Lent because I’d never liked it in the first place, and also because I was too young to comprehend what the season actually signified. I was barely conscious of anything at that age, let alone the amorphous concept of religion. I went to Sunday School. My family attended church every so often, particularly when Mimi and Grampa were around. But it wasn’t until I accidentally got my mom in trouble by uttering a single sentence that I realized just how much religion could dominate a person’s life. If only I’d known, then, just how much it would end up dominating my relationship with my grandfather.

“How do your parents usually celebrate Easter with you kids?” Mimi asked, handing me a hard-boiled egg.

I tried to think back to last year. I could recall the elusive “Easter Bunny” visiting our house, leaving baskets of treats and goodies in his wake. But mostly, my brain distracted me, overflowing with prospective colors and patterns I might use to paint my egg. I didn’t understand that this question was a test. And I certainly didn’t think to inform my grandparents that my family had indeed gone to Easter Mass and received Communion last year, just as we did every year. Just as we planned to do again in a few days. To me, things like church and God and faith were faraway notions. I was a kid. The only things I knew how to worship were books and Disney channel original movies.

“I don’t really think we do anything,” I ended up saying. “We just get candy and stuff.” And then my small hands clutched a paintbrush at last, and I became lost in creation, conversation forgotten, its significance ignored. I failed to notice the way Mimi’s eyes cut to Grampa’s in alarm. I failed to recognize what the consequences of my statement might be, not just for me, but for my mother, who’d been raised under the most pious of roofs. The very roof enclosing my Easter egg and I at that very moment.

She came to me, days later, angry. “Why would you tell Mimi and Grampa that we don’t celebrate Easter?” she asked, and the agitation in her voice confused me.

“I just couldn’t remember,” I said. “How do we celebrate it?”

My mother sighed, her gaze softening. “Being Catholic is something that’s very important to them, Kayleigh. They want it to be important to us, too. I know you might not understand what that means right now, but please don’t say anything to Mimi and Grampa in the future that might insinuate we aren’t properly celebrating Easter and Christmas, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, frowning. Something about it didn’t seem right to me, but I had no desire to linger over our conversation. After all, we did celebrate Easter and Christmas properly. And we were certainly a Catholic family; in fact, I was due to make my First Communion later that year. Nonetheless, some part of my spirituality had cracked open that day without me knowing it. The memory would keep coming back over the years, indicating something about my beliefs that I now knew my family might never be comfortable with.

…

Mimi died when I was nine, and afterwards, my grandfather started acting like God was the only thing he had left to live for. It was always awkward seeing him on a Sunday afternoon, because if you were still in your pajamas, there would be hell to pay.

“Skipped church again, did we?” he’d say to my parents, the disapproval in his voice imminent. Any time my brothers and I were left alone with Grampa, he grilled us about our beliefs, informed us of our divine duties, and quizzed us on general Catholic knowledge. Whenever he came over for dinner, my family made sure to say grace before eating, even though we rarely did so on any other day. We set routines into place that were meant to appease his displeasure and make him believe that we cared about God as much as he did. Still, sometimes, our behavior showed cause for alarm. Once, after overhearing a heated argument I’d had with my mother about a sweater I refused to wear, Grampa approached me in the hallway, sparks lighting his eyes.

“Don’t you know what the Fifth Commandment is, young lady?” he roared. At least, it sounded like roaring at the time. It sounded like God Himself had stepped into my home, intent on making me an obedient daughter.

“Um, don’t kill?” I asked, terrified, already knowing I was wrong.

“Honor your mother and father,” he hissed, and my heart dropped. Right. Immediately, I felt a terrible guilt creep up inside of me. I hadn’t meant to be disrespectful. I should’ve listened to my mother. But just as quickly as the guilt had risen, another thought suddenly materialized in the back of my mind: Could something as small as refusing to wear an uncomfortable sweater really be the thing that sends me to hell someday?

The idea didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. And so, my belief system cracked further, harboring a question that could only grow in silence as countless more bewildering examples of Catholicism made themselves available to me over the years, until finally, mere months before I was due to celebrate my Confirmation, I realized that I didn’t believe in God at all.

But… Grampa. If he ever found out I was an atheist, would he still love me? Would he blame himself—or worse, my parents? His life had always followed a clear hierarchy; one he’d told me about before in very specific words: “My priorities in life are the five Fs: Faith, family, friends, food…and then, in dead last, fun.” My mother once said that she’d grown up knowing that God was the true love of his life. More than his wife, more than his children, my grandfather loved God, and everyone knew it. He knew it. He would have told you that a devout Catholic shouldn’t live any other way. I have never understood this, but I have also never been able to ask him about it. If I had, perhaps my relationship with faith would have turned out differently. And maybe my relationship with my grandfather would never have become so tainted.

…

I’m twenty years old now. My grandfather is ninety. A few months ago, he had a nervous breakdown for the first time in his life. He began slurring his words, stopped going on walks, and complained a lot more, which we didn’t think was possible. For the first time in my life, he looked old. People weren’t looking at him and saying, “Wow, he’s in such great shape!” But the biggest reason we had to worry came from a phone call with my aunt, during which he informed her: “I don’t even know if God exists anymore. Why would He make me live in a world like this?” Her first instinct was that he was having a stroke. If my grandfather was questioning his faith, that meant something must have been very wrong. As it turns out, though, the problem was more emotional than physical.

Eventually, his depression got better. My Grampa is old, yes, but he’s trying to live again. He finally conceded to my mother’s long-lived argument for him to purchase hearing aids. In theory, he should be able to hear us better now, but he never acts like he does. Maybe it’s his way of finally ignoring the things he doesn’t understand about us, or maybe we’ve simply gotten too good at whispering. Either way, the hearing aids seem to have made him happier. My mother encourages him to exercise, listen to music, and reach out to family more often. He still goes to church every week, even gets there thirty minutes early. I dropped him off when I was home last, and for once, I wasn’t asked about religion, nor was I confronted about not staying to attend the service with him. We sat in comfortable silence the whole drive, simply existing as the only two people in my family who have reconciled with the quiet. Truth be told, it might be the only thing we have in common.

On most weekday mornings in Tokyo I board the Keiyō Line with a small stack of vocabulary cards and the quiet determination of a man who has decided, midlife, to become illiterate again on purpose. I mouth syllables under my breath. A, i, u, e, o. Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. The train rocks gently as it slides along the edge of Tokyo Bay. I am usually bent over my notebook, circling hiragana like a child tracing letters for the first time. If you were watching me from across the aisle, you might think I am praying. In a way, I suppose I am.

On this particular morning, though, I look up.

The conductor stands at the front window of the car, white-gloved hand poised like a dancer waiting for his cue. As we approach a signal, his arm extends with deliberate grace. He points. Not casually, not vaguely. He traces the line of sight from his eye to the light ahead. His finger remains in the air just long enough to seal the moment. Then it lowers. The train continues.

There is something almost liturgical about it. A choreography repeated dozens of times each day, whether anyone is watching or not.

A second conductor, stationed near the doors, mirrors the ritual when we approach the platform. He leans forward slightly, scans the length of the train, and points down the line. His voice follows his finger. A short call. A confirmation. The doors open only after the gesture is complete.

Later I will learn that this method…指差喚呼, shisa kankō, pointing and calling…reduces human error dramatically. When a worker merely glances at a signal, mistakes happen. When he points and names what he sees, the brain engages multiple pathways. Visual recognition is reinforced by speech and movement. Studies suggest error rates drop extensively half. Some reports claim up to eighty-five percent. It is not superstition. It is neurological choreography.

The conductor must signal a certain distance before passing the light. Too early, and the confirmation loses meaning. Too late, and the train has already committed itself. The gesture is calibrated to meters and milliseconds. Even in a system that runs with astonishing punctuality, there is room for caution. The hand rises before the wheels arrive.

And if the signal were not green?

I try to imagine it. The white glove cutting the air more sharply. The voice losing its casual cadence and becoming firm. “Stop.” The brake sequence engaging before panic has time to bloom. Calm, intentional, practiced. A ritual not only for progress, but for interruption.

There is a comfort in riding a train where someone is watching that closely. Someone whose job is not merely to move forward, but to confirm that forward is still safe. In my own country, I cannot remember ever seeing such a thing. Signals were assumed. Progress was implicit. We trusted the system and rarely considered the hands that guided it.

Here, the hands are visible.

I think about why I am in Japan. Yes, I am here to study language. To conjugate verbs and memorize particles. Watashi wa… Amerika-jin desu. As for me, America person am. I stumble through grammar that sounds, in English, like rearranged furniture. Yet beneath that practical explanation lies another.

We are here to meet people. To listen. To involve ourselves in their lives. To ask gentle questions about where they are headed and whether the signal ahead is, in fact, green.

The temptation, always, is to speak too late. To wait until the train has already passed the light. Or to speak too loudly, as if the raising of one’s voice could substitute for careful timing. But the conductor does neither. He signals early enough to matter, calmly enough to be heard, consistently enough to build trust.

I think of the people we meet…students, coworkers, neighbors…moving through their own timetables. The green lights they assume. The obstacles they do not yet see. If there is a complication on the tracks ahead, it is rarely announced with flashing lights. More often it is subtle: a quiet loneliness, a private fear, a question about identity that lingers unspoken.

What would it mean to be the kind of person who notices in time? Not to seize control of the train, not to shout from the platform, but to point gently. To name what is there. To say, in a voice that is neither frantic nor forced, “Look.”

The train slows as we approach my stop. The conductor performs his final sequence: glance, point, call. The doors open with practiced restraint.

I gather my notebook and step onto the platform, carried along by the soft current of commuters. For a moment I pause and look back through the front window of the car. The white glove rises once more, confirming the signal that will send the train onward without me.

I mouth the syllables again as I walk toward language class.

A, i, u, e, o.

Foreign student am.

Learning to speak.

Learning to look up.

Learning, perhaps, to notice.

Schroeder thinks he’s too good for the morning races. Instead of beating the pavement, he sits above the world: the flat-top of the American Bank building on the corner of 11th and Lehrer. The building was the peak of architecture when it was constructed around the time that Ellis Island was hemorrhaging the tired and the poor, but Schroeder wouldn’t put a nickel on anyone saying that now. As an architect, he knows. He knows, too, that structure is the greatest advance in human antiquity. No greater security can be had than that of a foundation¾no greater strength than buttress, column, and brace. He has scrutinized the failures from a breath away, so though his signature sits on no blueprints, his initials on no cornerstones, his name on no degrees, he is an architect. One fit to look upon the great successes at a distance and ponder the intricate spider’s netting of ideas that led to such artistry. “How many men do you think it took to build those things?” Schroeder asks the pigeons in the American Bank hutch. The stool-birds, who see the world in wide-eyed wonder every moment of their life, do not respond. Schroeder tears off a crust of his kaiser roll and feeds it through the chicken wire. Like him, they are not morning racers; those birds are ten stories down right now doing the deed.

A pigeon race attracts the rat race.

Bums crowd into the rectal alleyways of Hell’s Kitchen, each carrying a speck of the city lights in his hand: Zippos that snap like Lenny Bruce, cigarette tips, and hand-crank flashlights spotlight the birds on the docket tonight. Six of them identical in pattern, stripe, and bug-eyed fear, their names are lashed to one leg in color-coded cartridges that let the spectators know who’s who at a glance. Blue for Sawed-Off, red for Turkish Folger, black for Franz Ferdinand. People tell Schroeder the name invites disaster¾“One of these days that bird is getting shot out of the sky,” Ewing says¾but it’s staying. Franz Ferdinand: few souls have flown faster into history. The owners of the birds stand at the other end of the alley, two steps from the fog line that marks roadway proper, with headlights running over their backs and turning Ewing’s rain slicker into a blossom of neon; rush-hour is eight, nine hours gone by and vehicles are still choking through. Jerry Krone’s got a cigar as big around as a quarter in his mouth. Every nervous tic brings the log further between his teeth, flaying the brown paper casing. “By the starting gun you’ll be smoking that out your ass.” Krone gives Ewing the bird.

Krone gives Schroeder the bird. He holds it gently, like he’s holding a fragile tower of toothpicks. Hold it like a football: support the underbelly, keep the wings down (but don’t hold the wings, hold the feathers), never hold it by the chest or you’ll stop its breathing, and don’t keep Krone waiting for the cash or he’s liable to lick you. Such a beat of opportunity in Schroeder’s hands is thrilling. It’s like clutching gold¾the rawest nugget of it driven out of the earth by sheep herders on the banks of the Euphrates however many generations ago. Dug up rough and smoothed by aerodynamic friction into the sleek, opalescent droplet of water before him. He wonders suddenly about the complexity of ancestry that must be needed to produce such a perfect specimen. “No half-baking about this bird,” Schroeder says to Krone.

Krone says back, “I bet your old man would be beaming to hear about you racing wings.” If not for the pigeon in his hands, Schroeder would pop Krone’s lip.

Len Schroeder had a busted lip when his wife gave birth a month premature¾busted in a brawl that started as a word over on the east side and ended below the railroad tracks. He stared down at the runny, pink watermelon of his wife and told himself that the itch at the back of his throat was pride. The midwife told him the child weighed three pounds and nine ounces but that it was going to survive. The itch died in a sour shrivel then, and Len realized it had been hope.

The next line is, “Had to have been more than a million. You’re right; probably took a million each,” with a pause over the period to let the birds frightfully coo in response. Even they have no respect for themselves. “Probably took a million each,” Schroeder finishes, and the statement is punctuated by the popgun on the side street that means open the cage and fly, fly, fly goddammit, fly, and means also the orgasm will come any second now where the winners jump like they’re riding the lightning at Riker’s and the light-wallets sink to their knees with the promises of never again already eliding in their lips. The promises fall to pieces on the stairwell to the heart because the body is designed by fools.

When Schroeder told his father he was going to New York for university, Len laughed. Whole-hearted, full belly, in his chest, rolling like a hurricane up from the gulf about to tear through the Bible Belt. Then he’d said, “Half-baked and college-bound,” and that set him off again, rolling like a dynamite truck. When he was finished, he’d met Renee’s judgmental eye and said, “What? The boy’s an ass.”

Schroeder’s lips are cold, chapped, run through by striated igneous gorges with frost on the rims. He needs to put this call through because he decided the night before was going to be his first and last and only wing race, and he had the shortsightedness to tell everyone. Pound 0 for the operator. “Len and Renee Schroeder, Poughkeepsie, I don’t know the number.” While the operator hems and haws through the phonebook, Schroeder finds there’s rot in his columns. He hangs up before he can learn that his father has forgotten his voice¾that he never really knew. It’s alright; he hardly would have heard him over the construction anyway.

Deconstruction is for religion. Structures are demolished. It is care that defines the going up, and efficiency the bringing down. You could have walked every square meter of the Chrysler’s ribs when it was getting it on and been just as peachy as a babe in swaddling. Just look at the boys out on that I-bar eating lunch.

The pigeons eat kernels or legumes, whatever Krone can get for them. They look like little, solid pebbles of nutrients, unpleasant going in or out. Maybe those are only the gizzard stones, and the real food comes later when Schroeder isn’t around. His gizzard stones are kaiser rolls for breakfast and lunch, and they put their halfhearted labor in when he gets soup for dinner at the kitchen a few blocks over. He’s halfway through the second crust of kaiser when he hears the roar. The pigeons hear it, too. Their roost becomes a flutter of mad wings, all of them compressing into one shit-stained atomic center. There’s a plane coming home to land. Schroeder keeps on with the script: “It wouldn’t take near as many to bring them down, no sir. I bet you could do it with a few. Or one who really knows what he’s doing.”

Wasn’t that a father? One who keeps the family together, who is judge (The boy’s an ass.) on all matters of the domicile, who is responsible for any harm that may come its way. He is the cornerstone, so pull him free and see how the son stands. The structure goes to Jell-O¾carrots for the bones, struts, fathers. The best racing pigeons are divers: birds that that dip down and use the gravity to their advantage, birds who aren’t afraid to go so low they might scrape the asphalt. Not likewise for a good structure. Not likewise at all.

At the last moment, Schroeder’s mind grasps that there is no error in depth perception or trick of forced perspective. Then the whoosh of the engines is replaced with a colossal boom as the side of the trade center folds inward. In its place there rises a dust storm, like the photos of Oklahoma, c. 1930, only in lower Manhattan, tumbling out in ionic clouds with bolts of heat at the center. Red-hot, like love or anger depending on your angle. The men down in the alley have stopped their whooping, and Ewing faintly calls up to Schroeder, “Shit, what the hell was that?” Schroeder is speechless to respond. In sixteen minutes, story time will be interrupted down in Florida by a second plane, and the structure of the world will have started to topple over. All Schroeder can think right now is that the tag was blue.

Sawed-Off wins the race.

Franz Kafka moved in with me today into my rented flat with a broken radiator hissing like a dying animal.

His hair is greasy with the slime of the grave. His bald pate, coloured like a palm tree in the middle of an oasis of hair, shakes dandruff sequins from the desert mirage onto the floor. His hollow eyes, the size of a vulture’s, penetrate me.

“Franz,” I say, “what are you doing at an hour like this? You ought to be in bed!”

Franz winks and smiles wide, revealing what remains of his two teeth.

“Franz, why don’t you talk to me? Speak. That’s what you were born to do.”

“I’ve been talking all my life,” he says, “but no one listened. In death it’s too late to speak.”

After the fact. Poor boy. He never looked like a man. There he sits, in a Halloween costume: a white sheet with boogeyman eye slits beneath his forehead, trapped inside a boy’s body, frozen at the age of twenty-two.

“Franz, I feel sorry for you. You’re stuck inside a boy’s body. You look twenty-two.”

“If you’d let me marry you,” he continues with my rhyme, “I wouldn’t be so blue.”

“That’s cheap. You can do better than that. We’ve made great strides since your time in the realm of poetry, and you don’t stand a chance of catching up with us.”

“And what about prose?” he asks.

I sit up in bed. “The novel — alas the novel! — always lags behind. You’re still ahead of us in that area, bro.”

He thinks it strange that I speak with him on such familiar terms, my being a woman and all, but I explain to him the sexual revolution and finally comprehension’s light bulb flickers.

The radiator hisses, interrupting our silence.

“It’s simple,” I say. “The world has changed in unfathomable ways since you were born. War didn’t even have a shape back then. Now it resembles a blob of chewing gum that expands as you add one more blob to the mixture. We keep chewing, chewing, chewing, until some nasty fink comes along and rips it out of our mouth.”

“When will that happen?” he asks.

“When the world ends,” I say. “Nuclear war.”

“How come you know all this?” he asks. “How can you sound so certain?”

“It takes practice.” I lean against him to make him smell the beer on my tongue, the froth still fresh on my lips. “I have a talent for truth.”

“Women were certainly different in my day and age. They were more delicate. I liked them better that way.”

We go on like this for hours. I disagree with nearly everything he says, yet I am entranced. I am glad to meet him now, but I wish we were alive together at the same time. Then I could have truly exposed my soul. We would have walked the streets of Prague arguing about syntax and tracing gargoyles on ancient churches. I feel the cold cobblestones on the soles of my feet and smell the Vltava River as it snakes through the city, earthy and fresh, wafting the scent of fish and bread that I hope we will break together. He could have been the love of my life, although I might have been jealous too. Not of other women, but of his relationship to words. I would have yearned for him to see me as his equal.

We drink stale coffee late into the night, as he shares stories from his days as an insurance clerk at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute near the edge of Prague’s Old Town. He tells me about a man whose hand was crushed while he was working in a factory. Since he could no longer write, his wife had to come to his office to fill out the compensation form.

“I tried to help her,” he explained, “but the claim was refused.” I see tears forming in his hollow eye sockets. I wonder if the sockets are deep enough to hold the tears.

His tales keep me up in the middle of the night, refusing me sleep. I tell him that I want to continue exploring the dreamworld with him, but I need to sleep, because I have to get up early for work.

He disagrees and tells me that life is too short for sleep. Franz is a talker. I’m a listener. His steady voice grates against my ear, an ax that hurts so much that finally I ask him what’s the point.

“The point of what?” he says, confused. This is the first time that I have interrupted him in the middle of a speech.

“The point of writing,” I explain. “The point of it if it doesn’t redeem your pain.”

“Easy,” he says. “The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune. They make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves. They make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide —”

“Franz,” I interrupt again, worried, “why do you say that?” He ignores me.

The radiator knocks, as if something is trying to escape the pipes.

“ — lost in a forest remote from human habitation. A book should serve as an ax for the frozen sea within us.”

A sharp pain slices through my chest, as if I were myself the victim of his words. A half-filled glass trembles on the windowsill. Now that he’s coined a phrase I don’t think he’ll ever shut up. Franz’s voice is a lonely trumpet in the middle of the sea, but his loneliness is a matter of indifference to him, as well as, perhaps, to me. Franz keeps talking. He slouches behind his laptop screen, glowing with unfinished sentences.

Meanwhile, I turn to a stack of unpaid bills on the table and begin processing them.

“Why do you waste your life in pointless bureaucracy?” he asks me.

“Someone has to pay the rent, after all,” I say. It will not be him.

It wasn’t every day one got invited to a dead man’s party. In fact, it happened at night.

            Join us, the words echoed in Danya’s dream, a wispy hand beckoning her. Join us betwixt midnight and dawn… bring pizza…

            She stepped over the faces of the damned to nab a flatbread with ghost peppers from her local pizzeria. The workers looked ready to clock out, each wad of dough rolled flat bringing them closer to the end. One shambled over to the oven, withdrew the pizza, and offered it to her with a consumptive hand.

            She still wasn’t quite sure why the spirit had an interest in her. Eh, must have been a mix-up in the mental mail. Either that or the fact she was the world’s sole necromancer. It was her gods-given responsibility to help the dead leave this earth, since no one else could.

#

            She had expected a dilapidated manor or some cavern, but it was only an old barn. They are ghosts, she supposed, not much to work with.

            The translucent line to the party stretched far. The bouncer was a vermillion oni. The spirits who weren’t allowed in were waved aside, dissipating like gas.

            Another participant looked to have a bit more substance—that was to say, he was alive. He approached the bouncer, who cracked the man over his leg. His carcass fell limp, a light burgeoning from it.

            “Leave your body at the door,” grumbled the bouncer.

            Danya tapped her foot. The line was long enough to turn around—until a breeze flushed the ghosts away. She wrapped her cloak around herself and kept her pace slow (partly to appear menacing as a reaper of souls… her encroachment the plodding march of death… yada yada… and partly because she wasn’t keen on getting her spine snapped).

             “What’s your business here?” The oni towered over her, all curly tusks and rippling abs (which themselves had abs).

            “I saw it in a dream.”

            “Oh, so you’re another prophet,” he snickered. “Give me one reason not to clobber you.”

            “I brought pizza.”

#

            Spirits eyed her hungrily as she stepped through them. To them she was just a body to feel the world through. Nearly a hundred souls infested this old place. Something keeps them tethered here. She, being the only person who could know, intended to find out why they lingered.

            When she set down the flatbread (half-eaten by the bouncer) spirits slunk over. They looked at it, salivating. Gods, she did not envy the dead.

“Away, fools,” boomed the loudest whisper she had ever heard. He clanked over in shining silver armor, though his form was but a blue swirl. “Welcome, Her Lady of the Departed. I was hoping you would come.” He penetrated the flat of the, well, flatbread and withdrew a sauce-covered finger. He stuck that into his snowy-fiery core. “I appreciate the pizza, commemorating our death day. However, you missed the memo. Body at the door.”

            “If you can have a body, why can’t I?”

            “I have neither flesh nor blood, no organs or bones,” he offered. “Even then, it is still clear I am noncorporeal.”

            “Do I look any different?” She wrapped the cloak close around herself. For all they could tell, her face was the pale moon among a plane of blood.

            “Death’s not so bad…” said a spirit. “You will learn to appreciate a certain… abstractness… with the void.”

            But she had seen enough of the void. What these ghosts didn’t know was that she had something of her own scraping against the mushy cage of her mind. It was that spirit which made her a necromancer, and if ever she resurrected a corpse, she had to sacrifice her bodily autonomy to it.

            “I’m sorry, Mister Host, but I have seen enough of death,” she said, turning to the barn doors, propped open for a breeze to give the ghosts something to move on.

            “Stay,” he commanded, and the doors slammed shut. As Danya tried to push them, she saw a red buttcheek nestled at either door and cursed the oni for blocking the exit.

            “I will not kill you,” continued the host, “so long as you tend to our guests.”

            She had only one condition: no resurrections.

#

            At first it seemed hardly a bother to pour a drink down a ghost’s pleading gullet, but as the night droned on she grew tired weaving her way from one wailer to another.

            “Just to feel the sun again,” one pondered as Danya poured punch down his throat (absorbed into the ground). “Is this spiked?”

            “Even if it’s spiked,” said his spectral companion, “what would you care? You can’t feel a thing!”

            “Perhaps,” said the ponderous one. “Would it hurt to die again? I can’t even recall how it happened?”

“Could you tell me how?” she asked. Knowing would help free them.

“It was a lord’s quarrel during the Wars of Linaric Succession. Your father probably fought in them.”

She informed him that it had been, in brief, over seven hundred years since the wars’ end.

“Well, I wish somebody would have told me.”

She left them there to squabble and looked over the barn’s interior. Spirits in the air made merry in hollow ways.

“Is it true?” asked the host. “Are you the one who can grant life to the lost?”

“I don’t do so idly. Only when it’s life or death—”

“Then surely you would return me to something corporeal.” An icy glove fell to her shoulder. “I may lay a hand on you, but I do not feel the fabric of your cloak. You may sense my gaze, and know our eyes to meet, but I get no satisfaction from it.”

She scrambled up to the rafters, away from the party. Why should she celebrate the dead? What was dead was dead, burned to nothing.

At least in the Linarion they were cremated. Elsewhere they buried folk. Spirits were only freed if their bodies were burned, which might have explained the attachment to this barn.

She slid down the beams and landed on some hapless soul.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, but the ghost looked indifferent. “Why’re you so close to the beam I jumped from?”
            “Why are you jumping from beams?”

“You’ve got me there,” she said. “Did you enjoy the pizza?”

“It certainly looks like pizza. Perhaps with a sense of smell or touch… or taste… You wouldn’t happen to have… some sort of vacancy…?”

He erupted from the ground, sprouting a dozen hands frayed as the ends of old jackets, trying to merge with Danya.
            “Occupied! Occupied!” she said. His semblance was that of cloth stretched over a face. Humanity’s aversion to the uncanny was evolved so people wouldn’t consent to such eldritch forces.

“Blast it all, your generation is too prudish,” complained the old ghost, falling to the floor.

“My generation? When do you think I was born?” To figure out when these spirits became spirits, she needed to be crafty.

“Two hundred?”

“Not bad, you’re about seven hundred years off.”

“Damn you twice.”

“You’re already damned. I hope to be rid of that.”

“To be rid of us? Have I made such a foul impression that you want me gone?”

“There are fates worse than death,” she said. “You are tethered unfeeling to this plane. It is out of respect that I want to free you.”

“And because our host would sic that bouncer on your ass if you try to leave.”

“Further encouragement.”

“If it would mean I might leave this boredom behind, then I suppose I’ll help.”

“Good. I need to know how you died. Got a clue?”

“Nope!” He hacked up dirt.

“Wait, do that again,” said Danya.

“Heck, heck,” he forced out weakly.

“Try it again. I’m serious.”

“Plaht.” A wad of dirt rolled off his tongue.

“Perfect!”

“No, it’s quite nasty.”

“I have it,” she said. Usually souls were bound to their remains, giving hints of how their corpses were kept (a drowned ghost might vomit water). She just hoped no one would notice a bit of excavation.

#

She learned, as the ghosts lobbed whispery insults at her, that a bit of excavation, for most people, was too much excavation altogether. As the sound crescendoed around her, she ripped up more dirt, channeling her overwhelm into action.

“She’s gone insane…”

“…taken on a demon…”

“…ruin the party!”

Oh yes, she would ruin the party, and put these distressed souls at peace. Their hazy hands perforated her skin, yet her resolve did not waver. If she let these people suffer in undeath, that was condemnation. She was the only one who could see them and speak to them. So she tore at the earth like a cat at a new sofa. That didn’t stop them from pawing at her back, chills passing through her.

“What are you doing? I told you to make our death day merry,” said the host, clanking over. He took Danya by the throat with his gloved hand. She broke free and reached instinctively for her daggers, a folly.

The shades hovered around her.

“May we take her?” one asked.

“Let usss…”

A few phased through her, attempting to seep into her brain, but she focused and forced them out.

“If the corporeal want to disturb our affairs so badly, then we can do the same,” said the host.

“You invited me,” Danya snapped.

“And you accepted. Don’t blame me for drawing fools in.” Translucent figures flashed, voices vibrating through her body.

“Asshole!” She concentrated and expelled the spirits from her fingers.“I bought you pizza and this is how you repay me?”

“Yes, thank you. I will enjoy its taste on your tongue.”

“Huh?” She looked to the host, too late. He drifted toward her, armor crunching to the ground. She threw back her cloak, spread full like wings, catching spirits.

The host backed away. She swept her cloak, almost getting him. She caught a few others, manifesting as swirls in the fabric.
            “I just wanted to help you,” she told the host.

“A witch! She’s a witch!” cried a ghost.

“And you’re dead. You have no place being judgmental.”

She took a few more before they gathered together and sprung, swallowing her in a sea of light.

No escape. They invaded her, trying to reach her mind. She took out some, but all at once was impossible. Her focus wasn’t enough to purge them, but it could.

A tingle crept down her spine, spreading through her bones. It always started in the bones. It infected her skin, and souls poured from her dark eyes like smoke from a chimney.

“You should have known,” she said supernaturally loud, barn trembling, “there was a reason I could see all of you. Now stay away.”

“Make me your thrall.”

“Just to touch the earth…”

“You have been a terrible guest,” said the host. He clapped his hands and his oni bouncer burst through the doors. He gulped down the flatbread and bounded over the table. “Be rid of her.”

The oni grabbed at Danya but all he caught was cloak, burning with souls. He yelped and she fingered her knives. She didn’t want to do this, but if it meant self defense…

No. She was better than that.

“I am trying to help you. You died here, long ago, during the Wars of Linaric Succession. Whew—” She dodged a swipe from the oni bouncer. “I want to reunite you with the universe.”

“You mean to kill us, then?”

She was going to say no, but she felt the spirit rising in her throat.

“Yes. We will kill you.”

The oni shuddered, falling back and cracking the table in two.

Danya had to wrest back control over herself, psychic strain from the back of her neck to her scalp.

“I won’t kill you. Just… free you…” Her spirit pounded against the cage of her skull.

“On our death day?” asked the host.

The oni put his fists together, ready to crush her.

“Stop, stop. Give me a minute to think,” said the host. The oni slumped to the floor, deflated. Danya was almost sorry for him.

She took her cloak by one end and shook it out, spirits dripping out like water. Their whispery breaths were frantic once released, as if her cloak was a gag. Take them, the thing in her head repeated, though she knew better.

#

“Well,” grumbled the host, “I suppose if you won’t let us commandeer your human vessel, and if you won’t resurrect us so we might touch the earth again, then I guess you can go and burn us.”

The oni dug the rest of the pit to apologize for almost bashing Danya’s head in.

“I mean, I didn’t think I was being picky,” the host murmured to his friend. “All I wanted was to feel some warmth. Is that too much to ask?”

“Impossible,” Danya said.

“I wasn’t talking to you… but go on.”

“Even if I did resurrect you, you would just be bones.”

“Bones can sunbathe.”

“Right, but you don’t have the glands… and stuff. You’d barely feel a thing. Seems a dismal existence to me.”

At last, the oni had found where the skeletons rested en masse, a rather grim sight. At the pinnacle of the pile sat a skull with a lord’s silver circlet.

“Mass grave, huh?” the host said. “That seems familiar. There was something of a king, and a knife in my back. Knives in many backs. Then things were cold.”

“It’s as I suspected. You were a lord, betrayed in the first War of Linaric Succession, disrespected postmortem.”

“I was so young though… Do you think there’s time for a second chance?”

She shook her head. Death had no mercy.

“Ah, hell. I suppose this is for the best. I’ll be one with everything. Each second here wears on me, even if I try to ignore it.” He floated above all the others. “Goodbye, everyone! I can say that I have thoroughly tolerated most of your presences. If I knew emotion still, then I would say that I have enjoyed my time with you beloved souls.” The crowd breathily awwwwed and Danya knew it was time for fire.

She stacked dry hay over the skeletons and lit it with some magic. No, no, begged the spirit inside her, scratching at her mind. The bones blackened until they were naught but ash. She could have sworn there was something like a smile on the ghost host’s amorphous face before he and most others faded like curls of smoke. When the breeze flushed away the last stragglers, they were hardly whispers in the wind.

The oni brought miso soup to boil over the fire. It was a bit grim, but with a necromancer, what wasn’t? Once warm she supped on it, satisfied. Its vapor drifted into the air before a zephyr washed it away, too. What was gone was gone.

“Why don’t we start with the bodies in the trucks,” Franklin said, placing his cell phone on the table in front of his empty glass and pressing record.    

“Just keep my name out of it,” Lopez replied.

“Don’t worry. You’ll sound like a cross between a mob informant and a serial killer.”

They sat in a booth at the Red Rooster, for many years the county watering hole for local law enforcement and first responders, one of the few establishments that had recently reopened, albeit at a quarter percent capacity.  The short, wiry deputy sighed. He had not officially quit the Sheriff’s department, but the ensuing lockdowns and disruptions of the past year had been the final straw. He was in the process of finalizing his purchase of property in Texas and knowing of Franklin’s podcast, could not resist sharing his story, one last fuck you to Montgomery County.

He downed his bourbon and immediately motioned to the bartender for refills, looking around the room, head on a swivel, a thief casing a convenience store, still with the nervous energy that Franklin remembered from his court reporter days at the Herald.  The bartender, also the owner of the Café (and on this Wednesday night in the year of Covid also waiter, server, and floor mopper) brought their drinks and exchanged some brief pleasantries through his cloth mask before departing. When he was gone, Lopez said “I’m having second thoughts about this.”

“Steve, this won’t come back to you,” Franklin said. “When did it all start?”

“You know the timeline bro. Everything shuts down in March, the whole world turning to shit.   First week of April the trucks roll up. Drop trailers parked in the docks of some closed old warehouse.  So of course someone’s got to watch over them considering the Cargo and with my luck I get assigned to the night shift.” He gave a mirthless laugh, right leg laying down the beat to a rhythm only he could hear. “The proverbial graveyard shift.”

“What kind of trucks?”

“Trailers, man. Big ass refrigerated trailers. Kind that delivers frozen food to Safeway.”

“Just so I understand, we’re talking two tractor-trailers?”

“Wasn’t just Montgomery County, it was Bucks and Chester too, pretty sure Delco. All the county morgues were filled. And the overflow?  Well yeah, the powers that be came up with a plan.”

“So what did you have to do?”

“Monitor them, basically. Make sure no one tried to fuck around. Check every hour that the refrigeration was in order, the fuel good. They had gauges that were linked to the County computers. Any drop in temp, you’d get a red light.”

Lopez was speaking in a low voice that Franklin found difficult to hear.

“Can you speak up a little?”

The deputy surveyed the room for the hundredth time. Usually on a Friday night there would be a crowd, some live blues and amplified laughter, liquid decompression all around.  It would have been better for Franklins podcast, the backdrop of chatter and music and tinkling glasses, the warm sound of life to help his listeners visualize the scene, to see the room. The weight of reality.  Instead, the hollowness of the cafe was a forlorn echo, every other table stacked upside down, barstools staggered, an older couple chatting in another booth.  

 “So who knew about this?”

“Very few in the Department knew about it. Our Chief, the county coroners, probably a few other suits.”

“Jesus.   I mean, I still have some connections, but I didn’t get a whiff of this.”

“Yeah, well, just imagine if it got out.”

“So, if I was to drive out there now–”

“The trucks are gone. Detail ended in June.”

“But if I were to go out there.”

Lopez’ blue eyes became still and focused.  He leaned across the table, lowered his voice to a whisper.  “I know you’re going to do your own thing even though I’d suggest you don’t, but whatever you’re planning, you need to watch your back.”

***

Good evening, Franklin Graves here, inviting you to ride with me on this dark night. As you huddle in isolation, with our hospitals and morgues overflowing and a prevaricating swindler and his dough faced minions hemorrhaging lies, I’d like you to accompany me to a site in the heart of our county where for months the victims of this contagion were kept in cold storage  Welcome, listeners to Episode 22 of Grave Matters: “Warehouse of the Dead”.

***

At the end of March, after the entire world shut down, Franklin visited the cemetery where his father was buried. He brought a fifth of Four Roses and two whiskey glasses and performed the ritual he did every Easter in the twelve years since his passing (“Seriously?” Adde scoffed the one time she accompanied him) and poured two fingers over the grave and downed the next himself and said, “How the longshots running Pop?”

He was astonished by the number of freshly dug graves he saw. In years past times past he would note one or two recent burials, but that day the entire slope of St. Augustine’s was littered with dozens of mounds of freshly excavated dirt, undeniable proof of the pandemic’s impact. He felt guilty when he set the bottle down on his father’s simple marker, but hey it’s your fault Pops, all those trips you took me along when I was a kid and he started taking photos of the sun dappled landscape with his phone, wishing he had his camera. The piles of soil, brown mixed with red clay, were like mutant anthills, an obscene contrast to the rebirth of grass.  He could hear Adde in his head, “You and your greedy eyes.”  

She wasn’t wrong.  It was always about what he saw, what he could record, always about the photos, two that were like bookends of his career. The first, the one that lit the flame for his

lifelong obsession with forgotten history was a dog-eared black and white photo circa 1920 of his grandfather Gerald leaning against the very same huckster cart his father often told him about. He’s wearing a white tee shirt and a tilted straw hat, muscular arms crossed, ebony skin burnished by the sun, a hint of a smile in his eyes, a look that always struck Franklin as sardonic, as if he saw something others were blind to.

 “Your Grandfather was a huckster,” said his father (also named Gerald but called Jimmy for reasons never clear to Franklin, something to do with a gambling debt and a man named Bip) on the frequent drives through the village of Port Kennedy where his father was raised nestled in the bosom of Valley Forge Park. “He sold Produce and eggs and meats out of on old wooden cart.  Up and down these roads…dirt roads in those days.  He traded produce for wine with the Italians up the hill, dealt with the Irish by the churchyard, the Germans who worked across the river.  Everybody knew your grandfather.  He was what you would call an entrepreneur and along this road lived families of all race and creed.”

He pointed out areas of significance amid the bramble and overgrown fields, especially the weedy slash of land where a block of ten houses once stood.  Wooden structures, two stories high with identical double hung windows and tiny front porches and outhouses in the back and no electricity, company houses, built by the factory nearby where nearly all the men of the village worked, and some died, including his grandfather. His father would ramble on about the history of his erased hometown, plowed under in later years by the state for construction of the 422 highway and the expansion of Valley Forge National Park, the town itself disappeared via eminent domain,  a story behind every crumbling stone wall and abandoned well and limestone cave the only

artifacts left of a once thriving village. He told Franklin how they used to film silent movies in the village, how his uncles and cousins were often used as extras: runaway slaves, cowboys, gandy dancers. The stories sparked his young mind with the power of myths, igniting a lifelong obsession with the past, a fascination with sites that through neglect, erosion or erasure had been forever lost. “Landscapes of the Forgotten”, his first book of photography, published nearly twenty years ago, before the digital age transformed everything. Before his own vanity and stupidity derailed a promising career.  And now this contagion, of all improbable things, had reignited his imagination.

Ha! And what about that second photo, Franklin, Adde demanded to know. The one responsible for their breakup? Oh that’s what you think? Nope, not today. Shaking his head, he drove her voice away as he walked back to his car.

Leaving the cemetery, he realized the grass wasn’t all that green.

***

It’s pitch-black tonight. Even the moon is obscured by clouds and there’s very little traffic on this usually busy highway, which is fine, suits our purpose tonight.   Other than the streetlights, the main illumination is the glow from the mall ahead, even though it’s closed at this hour.  We turn onto the dark street that leads through the shuttered buildings of the industrial park, a boulevard of empty offices, and drive up the winding road where the warehouse awaits us, no longer in use, a place where the trailers parked, loaded with their terrible cargo, the place where they stored the dead in refrigerated trucks right under our noses.

***

He played the elegy from Vasks Quartet # 4, preferring the bleak glissandi of the strings to the mocking sarcasm of his usual background music, “Fables of Faubus”– he’d save that for the Lopez segment and deal with the comments from the purists that would instantly materialize:  Why did you switch, I hate classical, too depressing, the jazz was fun missing the whole point of the Mingus composition, but then you’d have to know something about the past, about American history. Truth be told (ha!) he was sick of podcasts, sick of the entire facile, ephemeral, misinformed likes, dislikes, emoji booted lowest common denominator social media swamp. Fuck it! This is my last.

It was darker in the industrial park, offices still in lockdown, most of the streetlights extinguished, the hooded, hollow lamp sockets serving no purpose. Twice that week he had gone on reconnaissance to get the lay of the land (due diligence his father used to say while pouring over the racing charts in the Daily Telegraph, a gnawed #2 pencil firmly in hand)  following Lopez’s explicit directions to the location, carefully mapping out his plan of attack: where to park, safest ground to navigate, how to breach the warehouse. The facility itself was unexceptional: a large white two-story mason block with high, evenly spaced windows. There were three delivery bays in the rear of the building.  A saw-toothed roof protected the roll-up doors, one of which was slightly raised, an open invitation he hoped was still in play.

 He drove past the building and pulled into the parking lot of an adjacent business and parked, letting the car idle for the warmth; after sunset the late October chill had come quickly. He wore an old hoodie and a wool cap; next to him on the seat was a backpack that carried the essentials: flashlight, gloves, camera. There were no other tools, no wire-cutters or crowbars, or anything else that could be used to pry, jimmy or otherwise force entrance to a locked facility; caught with such items the penalty would be breaking and entering instead of the more benign trespassing.  There was enough danger in his line of work without the added risk of jail time.

“Jail time? That’s what worries you? With this on your resume,” Adde said, pinching the skin of his forearm. “One look at your black ass squirreling around and they shoot, no questions asked.” He used to laugh it off, pointing out that her skin was darker than his to which she would snort and say, “I’m Calabrese, big difference!” Just a game they played until it wasn’t.

Always something with that woman. She would man the barricades over an over-cooked veal at a restaurant, sneering at him for failing to back her with whatever degree of anger she deemed sufficient.  Constant emotional turbulence with her, all the fucking time! Seriously, what was he doing? Nothing in common except…except that and the way she gripped the bedposts and… and Adriana, yeah, God almighty how he missed her.  

***

As I sit here staring through my windshield at the bay doors of this empty warehouse, I can’t help but think that something is terribly wrong in this country.  And I’m not talking about the pandemic. What worries me is that the daily accumulation of transgressions will erase our collective will to seek the truth, something more important than ever before in this time of cosmic erasure when violence is called patriotism, where malfeasance is called morality, where what you see with your own eyes is denied, repackaged, appropriated and ultimately forgotten. Even this, the sheer inescapable fact of a once in a century contagion, something with the dreadful power to stop the world, already being discounted, transformed, consigned to the nether world of conspiracy

and lies and that even those of us who reject this false narrative will bury our heads and gaze away and stare at our little screens in our own little corners of the world, safe and secure and not giving a damn.

***

So yeah photo #2, taken barely a mile from this spot where he now treads carefully on the wet muddy surface, moving slowly through the trees and down the slope to the warehouse, trying to avoid the slick gnarled roots because of course it’s started to rain. Yes, tell our listening audience about that Franklin, Adde whispers in his ear to which he replies out loud “Would you please shut up!”

He paused and surveyed the grounds: no activity on the streets of the business park, a nebula of light from the shopping mall and to the west, the black silhouette of hills from Valley Forge.  Nothing but darkness and silence.  As he moved through the thicket of trees, pocket flash in hand, it struck him that some elemental force kept drawing him back to this land, where his grandfather had sold his wares from a horse drawn cart, where his father was born and raised in the forgotten town of Port Kennedy.

 In his first book it had been photographs of theaters and synagogues, suburban streets and North Philly stoops; crumbling factories and dark alleys and wooded trails, each picture captioned with brief notes describing their significance. The lead painted ghetto schools, the asbestos inebriated factories, any site where violence, decay or cruelty had once laid its mark, any landscape tainted by evil and forgotten by history, and yeah, Adde, whatever his greedy eyes compelled him

to record.  Like the photo taken barely a mile from where he now was, one of the best compositions in the entire book: a glorious spray of autumnal sun filtering through the dying leaves of a maple tree, shafts of light illuminating the ground below where the raped and strangled body of 16-year-old Jennifer Satriano was found by a biker alongside the Schuylkill River trail.

That crazy woman’s rage after all these years.  His one and only book signing event at Readers Haven, the woman descending upon him like a Valkyrie, leaning over the table where he sat, her breath spitting in his face. . .  I’m Jenny Baxter’s’ mother you damn…and he waited for it, certain the word would come, but she held back and with a dramatic swipe sent books, pens and bottled water crashing to the floor before slapping him in the face and after all the uproar and chaos that followed (he did not press charges) that look on Adde’s face when he returned to their apartment, you could literally see the dark clouds roll across her face, her olive eyes growing darker come on into my kitchen cause it’s gone be raining outside but what do you do when the storm is Adde? No sir, one she-devil you don’t want to meet at the crossroads.  She accused him of exploiting the suffering of others to use for his art, but she didn’t ever understand, it was never about exploitation, but always about remembrance and preservation, a memorial to the facts, not air-brushed history, this very thing happened here!

***

He stopped in the dock area, noted the security camera mounted beneath the anemic bulb that lit the ramp leading to the receiving door and decided it no longer functioned.  There was half a wood pallet resting against the retaining wall and he carried it to the partially opened bay to use as a ladder. Pushing 50 and still got it, he thought, rolling his six-foot frame into the warehouse.

Immediately he gagged. His nostrils burned and his eyes shimmered and a bittersweet stench poured razor blades down his throat.  Choking and coughing, he sprang to his feet and through blurred eyes saw floating lights in the darkness of the adjacent room and heard men’s voices and loud rubbery footsteps.  Before he could follow his bag back out the warehouse the grinding roar of an 18-wheeler pulled into the bay, slamming against the dock enough to shake the walls.  By then he was squeezed behind the industrial baler in the far corner of the receiving area and trying not to vomit.

“God Damn Tank, knock the building down why don’t you,” someone said from the interior and a man came into view between the iron slats of the baler. He wore a black vinyl apron that reached his ankles, a plastic visor with a head lamp attached, a N95 white mask, black gloves, boots and as the truck idled he reached up to the pull chain and with two powerful rips rattled open the dock door with a noise like sheet metal running through a shredder. A white owl appeared, glaring from the back door of the truck beneath the words Blind Owl Transport. Clouds of frozen air poured out of the trailer when the door opened. A man similarly dressed rolled a pallet into the trailer with a hand jack and the two of them began moving things inside while more lights were switched on in the other room and floor lamps were positioned in the bottom bays around gray metal tables positioned under three-tiered storage racks.  Dark, aproned shapes moved across the floor, plugging in wires and testing equipment.

“Hurry up we don’t have all night,” someone barked and shortly the pallet reappeared out of the trailer with bodies cross stacked and shrink wrapped forming a naked pyramid and the well-

oiled jack zipped across the epoxy to the bays were the others tore into the plastic wrap and tossed the bodies onto the tables and the bone saws started up in earnest.

It was like the ticket windows at the track when his father brought him along, the brutal efficiency of the seasoned gamblers. Win, place, show: lungs, kidneys, livers. One man shouting out the tally, another jotting down numbers as the skin peeled away and the ribs snapped and the organs sluiced into white containers.

 He watched the activity in the adjacent room, swallowing his bile and searching for options. The emergency door on the closest wall to the baler was still in the shadows.  In his reporter days he had once covered a civil suit against a local Tube company, a case involving a warehouse fire and a locked emergency door which resulted in the death of a worker.  OSHA regulations stipulated clear access to all Emergency doors and a functioning panic bar, a gamble for sure.

But he needed to document this atrocity…

He was moving as quietly as he could, digging out his cellphone to film, searching for the video app when someone said, “Get more slop buckets,” and one of the men broke off and walked towards the baler, switching on a brilliant flashlight that exposed a stack of plastic buckets half-covered with tarp right next to him. The light played around the stained wall. Something not water dripped onto the floor.

“You need to step out, asshole.”

Franklin raised his arms and wedged out from behind the baler. Time to play that card.

 “Man, get that light out my fucking face, I can’t see a thing.”

The charnel house in the other room ground to a sudden halt. Not a sound except for his heart on his ribs.

“Just here looking for some pipe, tryin’ to earn a living, just like y’all.  Ain’t sayin’ a word to nobody.”

The man who was barking orders called out directions that Franklin didn’t want to hear, he was too focused on the head lamp of the man directly in front of him.  “Just some fucking junkie,” the man responded, turning slightly, which was when he moved forward, cobra-quick, hands seeking purchase on the slick apron and yanking the man towards him while simultaneously burying his head into his chin, using all the brute force of his hips and thighs.  The visor shattered, the head lamp and flashlight clattered, and the man  fell back, collapsing onto the tarp and upending the containers which puked out piles of gelatinous objects all over the floor.

 He juked around the outstretched arms and raced for the exit door praying this godforsaken place still adhered to best safety practices.  The exit bar compressed, and he was suddenly breathing in the rain scented night. He sprinted down the ramp, his eyes focused on the dim outline of hills to the west and his last thought before the truck driver waiting at the bottom of the ramp smashed him with the sap was I’m coming home Pops, I’m coming home and never gone back.

***

When he regained consciousness his first thought was that it was still raining because he felt the wet dripping on his face. In his face, plink against the bone, right down his throat slick and coppery and cold. The cold was freezing his brain, blowing icy wind currents through his skull, yet he was not outside.  He was moving, could clearly hear the fat-tired rumble of wheels on rain slickened asphalt.  And he soon realized he was not alone, the dead having a presence that was unmistakable.

He rubbed his face, then gently probed the rough texture of dried blood on his cheeks.  A stickiness, a muddy drying on his cheekbones that he clawed at and peeled away from his skin.

There was a sickening grating noise when he blinked.  He did it once, then a hundred times more and each time his eyelids crumpled and folded into caverns of scalloped flesh.  He wasn’t aware that his fingers were probing his eye sockets and meeting no resistance until he heard the shrieks reverberating off the walls, the sounds reaching an octave achieved by small animals at night, succumbing to predators.  And the sound of the tires hissed in tandem with the motorized growling as the truck rolled on.

***

In June of the following year a car parked across the street from where the warehouse once stood. The driver was a tall, dark-haired woman who helped her passenger from the car. He wore sunglasses and walked slowly, assisted by a cane.  He leaned against the fender of the car, and the woman, at his request, proceeded to describe what she saw. Men with hard hats moving through the dust and the few twisted girders of a demolished building, the cranes dropping the rubble into dump trucks. Hanging from a chain-link fence a sign advertised a reimagining of purpose for the site: a green space for the community with fountains and trees and walking paths, a playground for the children.

Aidan Gallagher lay in his hospital bed, eyes plastered open, the first time he heard the wailing. To most, the banshee’s cry would be something to fear. But to Aidan, it meant he would soon embark on a new journey.

            Aidan pined for his death as one would long for a lover. A two-time warrior of leukemia, when the doctors gave him the tragic news that he had progressed to stage four, Aidan was not unhappy. He was tired.

            This was his third hospital visit that month — this time for a cough that had turned to pneumonia. And he was bored out of his mind.

            When most people had long stints in the hospital, they had friends and family to visit them. But that was not the case for Aidan. His Nan passed away when he was a boy, and his parents had left him orphaned when he was too young to remember the sound of their voices singing him to sleep.

When the wails grew unbearable, Aidan considered calling for the nurses to bring him a sleeping pill. He rejected it earlier that evening, but he also had no idea that he’d have a loud visitor.

He raised his hospital bed to a seated position and glanced out the window. Aidan thought he’d see nothing but the flickering street lamps outside, but was surprised to see a mysterious woman in vintage mourning attire, illuminated in the lamp light. She looked so incongruous crouching by the rocky seaside that his hospital room overlooked.

Aidan eased himself out of bed, careful not to jostle any of his monitors that might alert the nurses on duty. He made his way slowly to the window and pushed it open.

He had to pause a beat to catch his breath. It turned out that moving while battling late stage cancer and pneumonia was hard work. But he wanted a closer look at his visitor.

His Nan always spoke of the banshee’s cry, especially near the end. She’d say, “Aidan, do you hear her? She’s calling out for me.” Then his Nan would smile and crane her head to the side, in a feeble attempt to catch a glimpse of her.

“To hear the cry of the banshee is a gift. You don’t want to run from her. She will guide you to the Otherworld where you will have eternal youth and happiness.”

Aidan felt the fire burning in his lungs from his small trek and longed for his heavenly guide.

He sucked in one more excruciating breath before calling, “Hey, you!”

His voice came out so soft, he didn’t think she’d hear. But the woman in black shot her eyes at him, pausing her haunted cries and pointed a single finger his way.

Aidan’s skin turned to gooseflesh when she uttered, “Aidan Gallagher,”  in a tone that left him more breathless than the pneumonia that infected his lungs.

He backed away from the window as the woman leaped into the air and began floating toward him as if she were a feather in the breeze. His heart monitor began beeping quicker as she appeared in the window with a smile, revealing a series of razor-sharp teeth.

“Who are you?” he coughed out.

She cocked her head to the side with an eerie smile. “Aidan Gallagher, I think your Nan taught you enough in your youth that you know exactly who I am.”

“How do you know my Nan?” Aidan struggled to catch his breath.

“I came for her about twenty years ago.” She crouched in his windowframe.

“Is she happy?” he asked, his eyes drifting to the worn prayer beads his Nan left him with. Aidan didn’t care where she wound up in the afterlife, so long as she was happy.

“She is pain-free and thriving,” the otherworldly woman said.

“It’s my time to come with you, I’m assuming.” Aidan sat back in his bed after a moment.

He glanced up at his heart rate monitor and noticed it slowed once more after she spoke of his Nan. There was something comforting about her presence after the banshee’s expert knowledge of her.

Aidan watched the woman glance at his monitor as if she realized the same thing. “You’re not afraid of me?”

“No, I’m not. I think I’ve been waiting on you for a long, long time.” His breaths were becoming more labored.

The woman came and sat next to Aidan on the hospital bed. Her skirts fanned out neatly. “Can you take my hand, Aidan Gallagher?”

Aidan reached out, timidly at first, before he wrapped his fingers around her surprisingly small hand. He expected the touch of a banshee to be cold, but he noted that it sent a comforting heat coursing through his veins. It felt almost like warm saline flushing out his IV line. But he relished in it.

A pool of water materialized in the center of Aidan’s room. He stared, wide-eyed at what he assumed was a hallucination from the heavy duty pain meds he was on.

“Step in,” the woman urged.

Aidan obliged and was transported to a fluorescently-lit operating room. He glanced down at himself, surprised to find he was completely dry. Uncanny.

Aidan was worried he’d be in the way as doctors and nurses rushed past him. The monitor had flatlined and they worked feverishly to resuscitate the person on the table.

He glanced over at the person’s chart, wondering why they were there and saw the name “Gallagher, Aidan F.”

“This is the time I almost died… during my first surgery.” He glanced down at the woman. He wished for a passing moment that he could see her without the veil. 

“Wait a minute… is this your memory?” Aidan asked, dumbfounded at the realization.

“You catch on quick, Aidan Gallagher.” The banshee  squeezed his hand. “I came to you that day. But you were not ready to join me quite yet.”

“Can you take that veil off?” he asked, bringing his hand to the lacy fringe.

“I’m afraid not,” she said in her wispy tone. “Come on. There’s still more I want to show you.”

The pool of water reappeared and Aidan let his companion lead him back in its murky depths. He was shocked when they walked up on a bustling city street. Their breaths were steaming in the chill of the night. Aidan found himself stepping closer to the warmth that the woman emitted.

“Where are we now?” Aidan asked, as he brought his free hand across his chest, shivering. He wished he had a jacket.

“Shh… Just watch.” The woman pressed a finger to his lips.

Suddenly, a car screeched to life, headlights shining brightly in their direction. Aidan shoved the banshee off the street with reflexes he hadn’t possessed in years, collapsing on her in a heap.

He gasped as icy grey eyes met his green ones. His companion was gorgeous, with a cute, upturned nose and plump lips he had a sudden urge to kiss. For a moment, he thought she might want to kiss him too.

Her eyes lingered on his mouth for far too long before she said, “Aidan Gallagher, I need you to look at the road.”

“You could have died.” He said, rolling off of her and sitting on the sidewalk.

“I am no mortal being. I don’t follow the laws of life and death that you have,” she sighed, smoothing out her skirts. “We would have been fine.”

Aidan stood to his feet, and offered the woman a hand up. “Where are we? When are we?”

“April 12, 2013.” She floated to her feet without taking his hand.

“The night of my prom?” he asked, realizing what just happened.

“Your date snuck whiskey into the dance. When you two got in an argument on the way to your after party, she became reckless.” The woman adjusted her veil, much to Aidan’s dismay.

“No. I don’t want to see this.” Aidan’s eyes welled with tears. “Sarah was pronounced dead at the scene. We never got the chance to make up…”

“Sarah forgave you. She carries no resentment.” The woman offered her hand to Aidan once more.

“Thank you,” he said, wiping a stray tear from his eyes. “Where to next?”

“I have one more memory to show you before we move on.”

“Take me there,” Aiden looked ahead as the rippling pool overtook them.

This time they were in an overgrown garden, filled with all sorts of technicolor flowers. “Nan’s?”

“Ay,” she smiled with a nod. “You used to love it here.”

“I don’t think I had any near death experiences at Nan’s house,” Aidan said, taking in the garden. He had not been there since he was a child — since the day she passed.

Aidan glanced over at the woman, but she was now a small girl… still veiled, but one he had seen before.

“Wait. Éabha? You were the neighbor girl I played with that summer?” Aidan backed away one step, then two.

“Your Nan had no neighbors, Aidan Gallagher.” Éabha said, turning back to her grown form.

“I could see you,” Aidan said, pressing a hand to his mouth.

“No one could ever explain to me how it was possible.” She shook her head.

“Éabha —” A sudden tenderness overtook him.

He slid a hand under her veil and pulled it over her face. Sure enough, she was just a grown version of the friend who comforted him when his Nan passed. He could now recognize her dark curls, pale skin, and those soft, sweet grey eyes.

“I’ve been waiting all your life to take you home,” she sighed, leaning into his touch. “I longed to spend more time with you.”

“What comes next?” Aidan asked. He wasn’t afraid, he found. He just wanted to be wherever Éabha was.          

“We go to the Otherworld.” Her smile illuminated her whole face.

Aidan slid his large hand around Éabha’s waist and pulled her to him. When his lips met hers, a lightness overtook him. He felt all at once unburdened by sickness. His lungs filled completely with cool fresh air and for the first time in years, there was no more pain.

Éabha let out a girlish giggle as she met his gaze. “Come on, Aidan Gallagher. There is someone who misses you very much.”

A cobblestone path appeared at their feet, leading to the lush, green countryside. The colors looked all-at-once more vivid than they ever had before.

“Lead the way,” Aidan said, taking her hand again, as she led him to his forever after.

do you know that old Pink Bismuth™ commercial,

            Bambi-eyed wife with the heatless curlers

and the shrew voice that sat in her nose?

            the one who called her husband darling and dear and mon petit chou?

the one in the teaberry bathrobe?

            do you remember her?

all dolled up she used to serve her industrious husband

wobbling monuments of perfection salad,

cabbage and baby carrots in lime stasis.

after the dyspepsia set in she would

tout fast-acting soothing coating action,

and, well, to tell you the truth,

i feel like that woman every now and again

because i think i exist only to nauseate men.

it is nighttime outside of our mint-colored curtains.

a set dresser put up the moon this morning.

mon petit chou is roosted on the edge of the mattress

            in a white undershirt that cuts into his white, muscleless arms,

and those polka-dotted boxers from the cartoons that show

when a tiger tears into the seat of a man’s pants.

i flounce out of the porcelain seafoam bathroom

            to rest on my bare knees, massage his back and shoulders,

connect palms to hunched blades. no fingertips.

darling, it’s our anniversary,

why so glum?

he clutches his stomach, molds his temples,

and tells me it’s my cooking again.

again? even today?

lately my fingertips Midas everything into Jell-O salad.

            lasagna bounces back if you hit it with a spoon.

seafood mousses into a jiggly membrane.

  i can’t even keep water from solidifying in the cup.

we have had to eat through peas in aspic to turn on the bedside lamp.

if you aren’t careful, i’ll turn your blood solid,

turn it into raspberry gelatin,

and my poor, poor mon cher,

i was trying to fix the rabbit ears. my fingers grazed them,

            now we watch Flipper through an orange-flavored filter.

we’ve hardly made a spoon dent,

and i think i exist only to nauseate men.

though it is an ad

i am unmarketable.

the sound stage is soundless. a wig-wag flashes outside.

            a booming announcer reads a cue card:

how can such a pretty wife

make such lousy dinner?

and when mon beau turns to the camera

to bobblehead sickly at my expense,

i want to scream.

nobody believes me.

i want to bash my head through the false wall,

shriek at the dolly grip just to be heard,

confess to the best boy i can’t help what happens to me,

tell the director i will show him,

i will harden his coffee into pudding.

but i don’t.

off-screen hands place Pink Bismuth™  into my open palm,

            and i read my lines:

ladies, if you get adventurous in the kitchen

            like me,

there is a solution.

            introducing Pink Bismuth™

for occasional digestive upset.

we cannot say diarrhea on television yet.

i am supposed to touch the chest of mon prince charmant,

            but i can’t.

i will jelly his heart, pectin his tendons, condense his milk. 

instead i use both my palms to toddler-pour shell-pink

into the cap thimble like mother hen

as i turn to ask the camera if i only exist to nauseate men.

i’m sorry i cannot be the girl in the sanitary napkin commercial.

i am not fresh.

 i do not bleed antifreeze.

i do not mount bikes or spin in sundresses.

i’m sorry i cannot be the wife in the Cocoa Crinkles commercial.

i will never have a litter to yank at my skirt.

 they will never make white milk brown.

i’m sorry i cannot be the woman in the lye soap commercial

who soaps mounds with the shower curtain open,

rub-a-dub mermaid seashell breast bubbles,

and so i will be the woman in the Pink Bismuth™ commercial.

the director will say cut

and when the medicine forms a Jello-O shot the color of strawberry milk,

  i will know then

that i only exist to nauseate men.

Picked up and taken to sea

in her dying waves

melting across rock and sand

smashing its arms into boulders

eager to bruise

I’m sinking

in the bathtub

with melting ice above

craters like whirlpools near my feet

taking ships and whales

sucking us all

the below where infinity

spheres

bodies loop around rope

tied from here to there

ocean to moon

across every corner of the universe

seduced by it

terrified and craving it

anchors pierce through the core

trying to escape the sea

holding onto gravity with blistered palms

bleeding salt, feeding it

each careful breath

twining, next to the last

the terror of knowing

one of them could be final.