By Liza Sofia

I roll down my window on the carriageway to get a better look at the sky.

It’s a good thing I’m not driving because I can’t keep my eyes from drifting up to the ethereal clouds above us. I point out a pair of dancing squirrels in the sky, their bushy tails intertwined, and I tell you they remind me of when I lived in Boston and fed squirrels on the Common in the evening. Ahead of us is an antique butter churn cloud. I tell you it reminds me of my first-grade field trip to an 18th-century manor. You can’t see the squirrels or the churn, but that’s all right. I’m happy to explain each cloud as we drive by.

But I don’t think the miles and miles of cornfields stretched out ahead of us are enough. I’m getting scared the road will run out.

I ask you to pull over every time we pass a patch of land with grass cut low enough for us to lay on, but you say we can’t because it’s private property. There isn’t a foot of terrain that isn’t private property. There’s always some pesky red barn attached like a tick you can’t shake off.

I can’t blame people for wanting to own the land and the clouds above it. Everyone likes watching clouds—the same way everyone likes watching sunsets and meteor showers and shooting stars. Watching them makes you feel small in the grand scheme of the universe.

But not right now. Right now, I’m an ancient Greek goddess riding through crop fields in a light blue Hyundai Sonata chariot, telling you the myths behind each of my constellations.

It’s getting darker. I’ve never liked the heat, but for once I want the sun to stay in the sky just a little longer.

I think about taking your hand off the steering wheel so I can guide it as I trace the cloud outline of the long-vined potted plant that almost fell on my head as a toddler, but I doubt you’d see it. Instead, I take your hand and hold it tight in mine and silently vow to tell you these stories tomorrow.

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About the Writer:
Liza Sofia is a 21-year-old university student who is currently studying French and Economics in Rochester, New York. Her passion for the literary arts started in early childhood, and she finished her first book manuscript at 17. Her writing has appeared in Raw Arts Review Journal of Arts, The White Wall Review, Coffin Bell Journal, Horseshoe and Hand Grenades, Fingerlake Journal, Sheepshead Review, and the Paragon Press.

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By Karol Jackowski

In the sisterhood, we were taught to think about work as obedience. We went where we were sent and did what we were told, believing that the will of God was wrapped in the decisions of the Superior. A group of 19-year-olds just discovering who we were, what we thought, and how we felt, we were told not to let any of our discoveries influence us. That’s soulfully hard to do without making yourself sick. But in that world, Superiors made decisions; sisters obeyed. As part of our spiritual formation as sisters, obedience became an exercise all its own, as well as a vow we were preparing to profess forever. More, the spirit of the vow called us to accept the will and practical judgment of the Superior as our own, and to do so without murmur.  

I could bring myself to obey, but I couldn’t stop murmuring. When I look back now, I see how mindless, distasteful work set my spirit free to wander, and though I didn’t know it at the time, obedience wakened my writing voice in hot and sweaty ways. In letting Superiors make decisions, it became crystal clear how much I agreed or disagreed and why, what I liked and didn’t like, the kind of work I did and didn’t feel called to do, and eventually, the work I loved to do. Not only did I discover a voice that was completely my own, but I noticed it was becoming stronger, clearer, and funnier. I became a constant inner murmurer. Something mysterious happened in the obediences I received: they became stepping stones to where I am now.

Every writer and artist I know tells the funniest stories of awful jobs they’ve had, as though it’s an essential ingredient in learning the craft—a rite of initiation, a test to see whether we have what it takes to be a writer. It’s those mindless jobs that make us think about work differently because we have to; it can’t be all there is. The work we put our life into must of necessity give us infinitely more than a paycheck.

I spent a summer microfilming medical records in a hospital storeroom closet, and a brutal year sorting boxes of construction documents damaged in a flood and breeding black mold. With jobs like that, we wake up dreading the day and counting the hours until it’s time to leave. We come home drained of energy, in a bad mood, full of complaints about another miserable day. On Sunday mornings, we begin dreading Mondays, and long for Friday every day. That kind of work stirs up dire necessity—a magic ingredient that eventually gets us from there to anything better.

In the Big Picture,which we rarely see, except when we look back in time, most work—including nearly every job I had—appears to be a turning point on the way to work we love. Out of necessity, we may have jobs that give us nothing more than a paycheck, but thinking about work differently can prevent even the worst jobs from making us increasingly miserable.  And if we have a loving family, community, friends to play with, or solitary splendor to come home to, we can survive any job for the time being. 

There is nothing more interesting than what we do with the lives we’ve been given and how we choose to live. Nothing is more divine than the steps we take and the roads we follow to discover what we’re called to do and what in us begs to be brought forth. It may take decades to understand what we’re called to do, but once we experience the life we bring forth, we begin to discover the work we love. We meet our Muses.

It took nearly 20 years for me to hear clearly the call to be a writer, to see there was no work I loved more than writing. At first, I was sent to be a high school counselor, teacher, and administrator for five years, before being asked to work with college students for 15 years; all work I loved. And somewhere in there, I moved from knowing I was a good writer to wanting to write more. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. On the path of doing what I was asked to do—obediently—I discovered what I felt called to do, and began thinking of work differently (thanks to constant murmuring). I began thinking of making writing my life because it felt increasingly like it wanted to be. In 1979, while living in a college dorm with 575 women, I began writing at the beginning and end of every day. Years later, I began minding my Muses. I stopped murmuring, and I turned myself into a writer.

The Gnostic Gospel of Saint Thomas reveals, “If you bring forth what is in you, what is in you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you…Do not do what you hate.” [1]

The older we become, the more self-knowledge we gain through experience, and the more clearly we see our purpose in this life, the more often we feel the growing need to “bring forth what is in us.” Everything we do brings forth something in us, revealing what we need to know to get to where we want to go. On the deepest level, where our own essence begs to be brought forth, we are led every step of the way, whether we know it or not, as long as we trust the divine inner capacity and we are willing to obey the only voices we need to obey forever: our Muses, and our own.  All we need to do is keep writing. It’s our work.

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[1] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Vintage Books:  New York, 1989, p.126.

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About the Writer:
Karol Jackowski left the Sisters of the Holy Cross and became part of the Sisters for Christian Community, an independent, self-governing sisterhood. Her books include Forever and Ever, Amen: Becoming a Nun in the Sixties; The Silence We Keep: A Nun’s View of the Catholic Priest Scandal; Sister Karol’s Book of Spells and Blessings; Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die; Divine Madness: Why I Still Want to be a Nun; and the cookbooks Let the Good Times Roll and Home on the Range. She has been profiled and reviewed in Rosie, People, The Star Ledger (Newark), ELLE, The Journal News, The New York Post, and The New York Times. She has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Speakeasy, CNN (interviewed by Soledad O’Brian), The Early Show (interviewed by Bryant Gumbel), WPXN-TV, Eyewitness News Sunday Morning, Weekend Today, and ABC-TV/She TV. Karol holds a PhD from NYU and lives in New York City and she teaches in the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at Bay Path University.

By Meghan Vigeant

Mimi’s white hair sticks up stiff and electric. I notice a brown spot on her gown—the same black and white flannel dress she wore yesterday. Why didn’t the last caregiver change her? I kneel in front of her on the floor, fumbling to bring a pale green nightgown over her head before unbuttoning the dirty flannel dress and trying to do it without leaving too much of her body exposed. She whines. She hates getting naked, hates the cold air on her skin. The thermostat is set on 82. I’m sweating. “Why are we doing this?” she asks.

“Mimi, we need to get you into a clean outfit.” I point at her chest, “Look, a stain, probably from lunch.”

Her face twists in disgust. “Oh, I’m a slob.” She pummels her knees with her fists. “Slob. Slob. Slob! I hate myself. I hate myself.”

“Whoa,” I intervene, my flat palms protecting her tender knees. “Whoa, there.”

Her hands in mine are a landscape of blue vein rivers and brown spot hills. Her body balloons with fluids and shrivels into loose folds. Shoots of pain interrupt her every step. She would sleep all day if she could, but her legs twitch and her mind cycles through loops of dementia and anxiety. By noon, she’s afraid of the dark. Even with sunlight pouring into her apartment, she’s afraid.

“Why am I still here?” she moans. “God doesn’t want me. He doesn’t love me.”

What do you say to a 93-year-old woman who just wants out of her body?

I could ask the same thing. On my drives home from work, I cycle silently through mantras that sound so similar to Mimi’s. Nobody loves me. Who would want to love me? Why am I still alone at 36?

“Don’t live past 90, dear,” her mother used to warn her. She repeats this line for me like a song. She is three years overdue.

Before dinner, I arrange two green tea towels on her chest and lap to avoid more spills on her clothes. Her chest rattles when she breathes.

“I have this terrible cough,” she tells me.

“You sure do. You should get rid of it.”

“Help me. Tell it to go away.”

“Hey cough,” I say, “we’d really appreciate it if you’d leave.”

“Oh, thank you,” her gratitude laced with sarcasm.

There is a brief pause. Mimi coughs.

I shrug. “If only it worked that way.”

While she eats, I wash dishes in the kitchen and keep an eye on her through the pass-through window over the sink. She’s snoozing, listing to starboard, as she says, then startles and picks up the spoon and pokes at the shrimp casserole on her lap. “You should just put me out with the trash,” she declares.

I snort, roll my eyes. This line again. I need a new comeback. “Would you prefer recyclables or waste disposal?” I ask.

“Disposal,” she deadpans, her gray eyes daring.

I wipe my hands on a tea towel and flip the switch for the food disposal. A deafening rumble shakes the apartment, growling like a demon as it grinds orange peels and shrimp tails.

She looks up from the plate sliding down her knees. “What’s that?”

“That’s gonna be you, dear. That’s what you want, right? To go with the disposal?”

“Hmm. Maybe not.” She smirks at my joke.

I am the court jester. I trick her out of bed. Trick her out of her funk. Trick her out of lousy thoughts. I perform magic on a confused crumpled woman, a transformation with words, with favorite books, lullabies, black and white movies, sips of Ensure, and spoonsful of coffee ice cream. I make jokes, put a smile on her face and mine too. Before I know it, she is up on her feet, wobbling, shuffling her walker to the big brown chair. Before I know it, she is eating her grapes and singing, “Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.” She doesn’t even like grapes, but she’s eating them. Before I know it, she is laughing and lighthearted again.

Before I know it, she will be gone, and I will still be here.

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About the Writer:
Meghan Vigeant is a writer, teacher, and oral historian in Maine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Island Journal, Balancing Act 2, Maine Boats, and Hole in the Head Review; it has been also been featured on public radio and podcasts. Meghan was a Monson Arts resident and an Island Institute Fellow. She is the author of Guts, Feathers, and All: Stories of Hard Work and Good Times on Swan’s Island, Maine. She recently earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Stonecoast.

By Heidi Fettig Parton

In the middle of September, you are in the backyard on your knees. You are not praying, but perhaps you should be. Bended knees can lift up, bended knees can kill.

The world, heavy with sorrow; you persist.

Using your gloved hand, you dig out still-green clover and dandelions where they encroach on your garden. Yet, these have no lesser claim to the earth than the marigolds, squash, and beets.

Your grandmother pickled beets on the North Dakota plains. Those ruby circles were heaped in an unwelcome pile on your dinner plate. But all things, even taste buds, evolve. Now beets taste like the dark soil of memory. Their earthy flavor roots you to a lineage come and gone.

You turn the soil over, awakening the freshness of tepid air after a rain, uncovering thick, long earthworms in the clumps of rich earth. Earthworms have not eyes, but light receptors, alerting them to darkness and light.

Whenever you encounter an earthworm trapped in the center of a concrete sidewalk in the morning sun, dried out but still wriggling, you use a foraged stick to gently lift the struggling worm to a dew-covered patch of grass.

You know the aching pull of home, the pain of displacement, however brief. Is this still my country, you ask?

Like muddied worms, your vision is impaired. Perhaps by clouds. Perhaps by the hazy smoke of fires out West reaching your landlocked Midwestern town. This year has seemed a tunnel with no end. You imagine growing your own receptors of light to lead you through.

Here on your knees in the garden, you tap into a small, nascent shift toward the sacred interconnectedness of all things; you reach for that ancient circle of belonging.

You are made of clay and love and delight. Remember this.

Scooping handfuls of dirt, you fortify your soul for the tasks awaiting you in the future, where you will slowly wind your way, where you will—upon arriving—bend your knees in prayer.

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About the Writer:
Heidi Fettig Parton received an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University in 2017. Her writing can be found in many publications, including Assay Journal, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Angels Flight, literary west (AFLW), The Manifest-Station, and The Rumpus. More at www.heidifettigparton.com.

Every summer, Bay Path University’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction writing offers a weeklong Writing Seminar based in Dingle, a town nestled on the Atlantic coast on the western shore of County Kerry, Ireland. Each day throughout the week, Seminar Facilitator Suzanne Strempek Shea gives participants a prompt to encourage writers to investigate new ideas and topics in their writing. During August 2020, we’ll publish our Emerald Blogs to showcase the diverse work developed from responses to Suzanne’s prompts.

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From Suzanne Strempek Shea

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He hovers over the Keurig machine trying to make a teabag produce coffee.

Is he brushing his teeth these days? No toothbrush in either bathroom or by the utility sink in the basement. Putting folded clothes away, I discover his plastic toiletry case poking out from under a pile of hand-knitted socks in the top drawer of the dresser. It contains five or six toothbrushes, all seemingly new and recently opened. Does he un-package a new one each time he brushes his teeth? When did that start? Why haven’t I noticed?

The phone rings less than three feet from where he sits with his eyes closed. He doesn’t flinch. A diminished sense of smell was one of the earliest symptoms; that occurred well before memories began to recede. Recently, I’ve noticed that items within eyesight don’t always register. He doesn’t see the carton of milk on the counter, his shaving cream on the shelf, the TV remote in the basket I ask him to hand to me when it’s time for Jeopardy! Surely the phone’s jarring ring should elicit a response. Does the ringing not register? Is he confused about what to do? Is this what lack of motivation—a common behavior listed in the literature—looks like?

Although he no longer reads them, I still carefully choose fly-fishing books for holidays, birthdays, and no-particular-reason gifts. It’s a three-decade habit. 

I arrive home from campus on a chilly April evening to find him sitting in the dark wearing polarized sunglasses to watch the evening news. I kiss him on the forehead and scan the kitchen counter. Taking two stairs at a time, I head to our bedroom and check the bedside table. No luck. I dash back downstairs and recheck the living room before heading to the basement to scout the folding table where he’s been arranging stones he discovered on beaches in Leland and Northport, Michigan. Again, no luck. “If I were his eyeglasses,” I ask myself, “where would I be?”

The answer: anywhere.

I trail up to bed late and find him asleep in the Levis, flannel button-down, wool pull-over sweater, and striped socks he wore all day. And the day before. I pop the tank out of his CPAP machine, fill it with distilled water, and adjust the finicky face mask, repositioning the Velcro closures around his ears. I tap the start button and crawl in next to him, but before I turn off the bedside lamp, I pass my hand over his face to feel his breath.

He’s taking the dogs for a quick walk, he announces. Faithful friends Zelda and Phaedrus fixate on his every move, then agitate when he retrieves a single leash and walks alone out the back door toward their regular route. 

As we drive 30 miles from Traverse City to Northport, he’s content and quiet until we round a curve and the view of Lake Michigan is no longer obscured. He points to a mirage on the water, a number of illusory islands in the distance. “An archipelago,” he offers.

“Do you think they’re real, the islands?” I ask, downplaying my surprise at his use of archipelago, a specialized term, the kind of word once a natural part of his lexicon.

“Well, you see them too. There’s your answer,” he says.

After we return home, I mention his previous reference to an archipelago. He has no idea what I’m talking about. I coach him. I reference our drive earlier in the day, mention him pointing to what looked like islands in the bay. I want him to recall the setting. He can’t but he’s amused by the idea of a mirage, an archipelago, by something he noticed earlier and now can’t remember, even with my prompting.

He mows part of our front lawn and part of the neighbor’s. Task complete.

I hear him at the front door chatting with unfamiliar voices and intervene. Should I post a “No Solicitation” notice on the cedar siding? Is it time to stash the checkbook and remove the remaining credit card from his wallet?

It’s Father’s Day 2018, and I have forgotten to pick up a card. Don’t worry, I tell myself. He won’t notice.

He’s antsy for a bike ride, but the sun will set within the hour and the mid-summer sky threatens rain. I suggest putting it off until the following day, hoping that sounds like a casual request. Recently, I’ve seen frustration when I crowd his independence. I’m seeing it again, so I cave. “Maybe keep it close to home, just to Garfield and back,” I say, mentally calculating the 15-minute round trip. When a soft rain begins to fall a half hour later and there’s still no sign of him, I begin to worry. As I consider how the combination of drizzle and dusk might disorient him and how I have enabled this insanity, I move into batshit-crazy-full-on panic.

My rational friend Rachel, who’s visiting for the evening, guides me to her car. While she drives, I scan the streets and alleys. Twenty minutes later we spot him biking toward home from opposite the direction we discussed earlier. It’s clear I can no longer trust his ability to keep with a plan. Rachel and I race home, repark the car, and return to sitting and chatting as if we’ve been doing so all along. Alerting him to my alarm doesn’t make sense. Frayed synapses are the problem here, not staunch willfulness on his part. Best to let him enjoy the evening without upset while I consider options to avert future disasters.  

There’s a café at the co-op in my neighborhood where I steal time in the early morning, just me with my thoughts and my laptop. I justify the self-indulgence as self-care, but self-care sometimes dissipates as I observe a couple, regulars, folks like us. The “us” we once were. He orders and pays at the counter, then brings their coffees to the table close to the window where she sits waiting.

“How can I help?” he asks. Brown spots in the yard signal that the grass needs extra water during the summer’s relentless scorching weather. My to-do list is long this day, so I welcome his offer. He listens closely as I point to the backyard and say, “Move the sprinkler a few feet but don’t let the water hit the sidewalk. Keep the water on the grass.” He leaves the room and goes somewhere, not outside.

He still makes our bed each day. I take note of how well, as if his bed-making skills parallel the progression of the disease.

It comes out of nowhere. It always does. The sense of dread. The panic. The future. The when. The what ifs. What if I can’t make it work? What if I have to make unimaginable decisions? What then? What if I get it wrong? What next?

Then I hear the words of our elder attorney—who refers to me as “dear,” and I let him.

“Just put it to bed,” he said the last time I called him with more questions and worries. He said what I needed to hear. It clicked. Just put it to bed. I’ve done what I can to prepare. Time will run its course. The disease is fatal. The progression continues. I can’t control the outcome. None of us can.

Just put it to bed.

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About the Writer

Deirdre Mahoney is on the English faculty at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. Currently, she is working on a collection of narrative essays based on her experience of living with and caring for her late husband who died from complications of younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

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Write with us in Dingle next year, July 31 to Aug. 8, 2021. Contact sshea@baypath.edu for full information.

We welcome submissions to Multiplicity Blog (nonfiction prose of 1,000 words or fewer, poetry, and photography) all year. Click here for more details on submitting to Multiplicity Blog. From September 25-October 30, we are also accepting submissions of brief true stories and reflections on the Black Lives Matter movement (100 words or fewer) for “Multiplicity Commons: Readers and Writers Respond to Black Lives Matter.” Click here for more details on submitting to Multiplicity Commons.

By Fabrice Poussin

From the Photographer:

There is nothing more awe inspiring than the wonders and power of the earth, which grants us the privilege of its nurturing for but a few decades.

This image, like so many taken in the vicinity of Yellowstone Park, is an homage to the earth’s power. Standing in the center of what could be the most powerful dormant volcano on this planet is nothing if not humbling.

Simple in its clear beauty, a burst of boiling water links us to the inner workings of our planet and the universe. This image balances the purity of color and water with the potential destructive forces that lay below us. What appears to be a mere photograph of a little hole in the ground is in fact about the unsuspected forces encompassed within the incredible life-giving and life-altering world we are fortunate to call home.

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Secrets of the Deep

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About the Photographer:
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review and the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.

By Jenee Rodriguez

I adore a mystery.
Now, at 26,
I never felt more like one in my life.

My past is in the clear water,
and I say thank you each day
for the things I thought about
at 16, 18, 20, 21.

Mistakes have become memories,
some universal heartbreaks,
some minimums—
But I am no longer hard on myself for them.

I only look back
to try and tell me something,
to tell you the words that burn inside now:
I love you no matter what.

I don’t have to be afraid to look anyone
in the eye. Thank you, past me, for staying strong.
You kept me alive.

I became beautiful because of you.
I won’t let you forget that.

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From the Writer:
To all my young girls: loving hard is your real power, and patience is everything. One day you will look back and remember all your bravery and boldness, how you went through the floods and flames, and how ready you were for the better things in life. — Jenee Rodriguez

By SJ Griffin

Every fat person will tell you that no one has been there for them like food has. Not my girlfriend, my dog, or even my mom compares to what I feel with food. But there’s loathing in that relationship too. I moan pleasure and pain into each bite I take. Every time I eat, I either say “I love myself” or “I hate myself,” but I always feel both.

In the era of body positivity and PC culture, I have an idea what “healthy society” thinks of fat people, but they’re afraid to say it. They think we’re lazy, excuse-making, energy-depleting whiny asses who are secretly jealous of skinny people. We stuff our faces with frozen pizza and McDonald’s French fries and all things gloriously easy and American. We like to use our tragic pasts and sob stories to excuse our slovenly ways, while taking up space and energy on a quickly dying Earth.

Here’s something worse than healthy society can imagine: what I really put my body through. I am constantly destroying my body. I’ll starve myself the whole day so I can pig out at night, stuffing my stomach until the acid reflux floods up my gullet. I love eating until the feast is over, when I’m bent over, praying for death because my stomach hurts so much, when I’m lying in bed while my girlfriend rubs my swollen tummy in clockwise circles.

But in the age of body positivity, I have to love—no adore—my body through it all. If I don’t, then I’m fat shaming myself. I’ve had friends lie to me. “You are not fat,” they say, “You’re beautiful.” (Hey, fat people, you can be both.) I’ve had friends slap me (hard) when I called myself fat, like it was a bit for a sitcom. When I complain about my thunder-blubber thighs ripping the inseams of my jeans again, those friends bark “shut the fuck up.”

I am jealous that skinny people can walk in a store and find their size in anything. I’m jealous that they can drive through the Walmart parking lot without being called a “fat fuck” by a bunch of guys carrying six packs. I’m jealous that they can ignore that guy in the corner of the classroom who ironically called me (the only fat person in the room) “scary fat” while our class analyzed Hunger by Roxane Gay.

Why should I take verbal beatings from my enemies and my friends?

Since weight is considered a medical concern, many people say I should trust my doctor’s opinion. Surely a medical practitioner who has sworn to “do no harm” must be completely logical and unbiased about this sort of thing, right?

When the doctor enters the examination room, she glances at me, then back to her clipboard, then asks, “Why are you here?”

“I need to have my prescription refilled,” I say. “Metformin.”

“Were you taking that for diabetes?” she says.

Her eyes don’t move from her clipboard.

“No,” I say. “PCOS.”

“Ah,” she says, finally looking up. “I figured you must have something like that.”

I don’t ask because I know the signs of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS: facial hair, rough skin, excess body hair, thinning hair on the head, mood swings, headaches, fatigue. This doctor couldn’t have noticed all of those from a half-second glance. But I must have something to explain my fatness.

The doctor tells me I need to exercise and lose weight as she sticks her hand up my vagina for a pap smear. I can’t help but take it personally when she’s got her whole head up inside my most private, holy area—when I already feel as uncomfortable as she can possibly make me—and she tells me I’m not good enough.

I simply nod every time the doctor says I can lose “the weight,” as if it’s a separate entity I can just leave behind, like it hasn’t consumed my whole life.

I didn’t know I was the biggest person in my kindergarten class until my crush slapped the “fat” insult into my chubby cheeks, like red stamps that said “worth” on one cheek and “less” on the other. I never thought about my weight until then, but after that moment, the glass bubble shattered.

I had appointments with nutritionists, I couldn’t fit in the school uniforms, I couldn’t do the same things my friends did (PE was a nightmare). Middle school and high school were the worst. I never got a date, never got asked to dance (although that’s partly because I’m queer). The whole middle school mocked me for months after I was publicly “rejected” by a boy I didn’t even like because a rumor spread that I did. Apparently, they felt I had to be punished for thinking a fat person could find love.

I still feel inadequate. My girlfriend has to constantly assure me that she finds me physically attractive, though I shouldn’t have to count such validation toward my self-worth. Sometimes, when I masturbate or have sex, I suck in my stomach and pretend I’m skinny just to feel pretty enough, to feel good.

The anti-fat-shaming culture was founded by fat people, most significantly fat Black women, reclaiming pride in their bodies, but now it’s “cool” for skinny PC people to appropriate the movement without upholding its tenets. Society isn’t changing as much as it seems to be on Twitter and Instagram.

I’d like the privacy to explore my own fat-shaming and the damage that has been done to my body without thinner people telling me how I should feel about myself.

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About the Writer:
SJ Griffin (they/them) is a queer, trans, fat writer and editor based in North Carolina. They have a BA in psychology, BFA in creative writing, and certificate in publishing from UNC-Wilmington. You can find more of their work in Motherwell, Crab Fat Magazine, Semicolon Literary Journal, Mookychick, Marias at Sampaguitas, and more. Find them on Twitter @born2blossom.

Looking down

By Austin Metze

Leaning in over the swamp’s edge
I’m drawn to an anomaly—
intensely dark pulsing water,
like an oil spill in the shape of an archipelago;
Long Island viewed from 10,000 feet,
early morning commuters beginning to stir.

A mass of frog embryos,
having just crossed over into life,
embrace each other in an inky mass,
then break out blindly like bumper cars
rhythmically waving spermy tails.

Nearby, rafts of eggs float looking up
with dazed black-yoked eyes
cast blindly to the heavens.

The mother to this life spill
sits by my feet,
a Buddha frog
in contemplation of her creation,
witness to galactic birth.

I’ve been looking down a lot, at
floating islands of pale blue flowers,
stone snapshots of river flow—
I’m starting to see down and up
as different versions of themselves. . .
but who is watching me?
Certainly not the frogs.
Birds show little interest,
practicing avoidance with both eyes.
They think that I can’t fly

After a rain

By Austin Metze

After a rain
the world stands in place,
sedated by its presence—
it’s holy water
that falls upon us.
There is no other kind.

To a fallen tree

By Austin Metze

What do you miss most about standing tall?

Feeling lofty

My shadow stretched before me
it’s changing lengths from west to east

The shape of limbs I sense but cannot see

My leaves giving sound to the wind

Taking a long slow drink after a summer rain

Is there anything good about lying on the earth?

Yes, returning to my roots

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About the Writer:
Austin Metze is a poet, essayist, painter, and book designer. His work has been published in Weeklings Literary Journal and Tiny Seed Literary Journal. He has self-published three chapbooks: Crow’s Blood, Hudson Street, and I Tried To Show My Dog The Stars, as well as a book of essays, When Life Calls You Out, It’s Usually Onto A Highway.

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