By Kara Noble

“I’m going to break your arm!”

The old man slams her to the emergency room floor, wrenches her arm behind her, wedges his knee in her back. His fingernails gouge her wrist, then jerk up and away. She pinches her eyes shut and presses her cheek into the floor, bracing for the punch she knows must be coming.

A man shouts nearby. She gasps as the old man thrusts himself up off her back. Freed from his weight, she curls into a ball and covers her head with her hands.

The old man hurls his wiry body at the oncoming hospital security guards. He crumples the first one with a right cross, then flings a chair at two others rushing toward him. She can see that his energy is nearly spent. The burly guards engulf him, pin his arms, and wrestle him onto the hospital bed in the middle of the disarray in his ER examining room.

She rolls out of the way of the swarming emergency responders and finds a wall. Its smooth solidness feels reassuring. She sits, her back pressed against it, knees clutched to her chest, and watches. A nurse produces a syringe. After the injection, the old man’s thrashing slowly subsides. His eyes close. His breathing eases. Restraints are fastened.

Someone helps her up. Someone else closes the dull gray medical drapes around them, shutting out the rest of the ER. A nurse guides her into a chair.

“Are you all right?” the nurse asks.

Am I? she wonders.

She nods.

“Are you sure?”

She isn’t, but she says yes anyway. She wraps shaking hands around the plastic cup of tepid water the nurse offers her and gulps it down.

Around her, hospital staff right toppled furniture, reset equipment, monitor the old man. They check on the security guards.

“I’m fine,” the punched guard says, massaging his jaw with his palm.

“Flattened by an 80-year-old,” says a second guard. “You’ll never live this one down, Jim.”

The guards disappear out the drapes, laughing as they go. Doctors and nurses drift away until only she and the old man remain in the tiny, curtained space. She drags her chair to the side of his bed.

Lying there, strapped to the metal rails, he looks deflated. Drool dribbles into his graying beard, the bristly beard that used to prickle her cheeks when he kissed her goodnight. His dark eyes—eyes that twinkled when he laughed—are now shrouded in wrinkled, twitching lids.

His hands are clenched in medically managed terror. They were strong hands, hands that once bent and welded steel into high-rise towers. They were gentle hands, hands that comforted her and smoothed away her tears the day she fell off her bike when she was nine.

She lays her hand over his fist. He feels so cold. She tugs the thin hospital blanket over him.

Dementia stole his mind, his personality. Will it steal my memories of him too? Will I forget the good times? Will I remember what he was like before he got sick?

She twists in the hard, plastic chair beside his hospital bed trying to find a comfortable position, but there isn’t one.

I must remember what not to forget.

About the Writer:
Kara Noble is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in publications ranging from textbooks and dictionaries to newspapers and magazines. She served as the editor for Merriam-Webster’s language question-and-answer column, “Take Our Word for It,” their public radio program “Word for the Wise” (WAMC, Albany, NY), and their online “Word of the Day” feature. She particularly enjoys writing about horses, and her equine-related stories have been published in Massachusetts Horse, Connecticut Horse, The Competitive Equine, Tölt News, and Quarterly, the official publication of the U.S. Icelandic Horse Congress. She holds a BA from Amherst College and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University.

By Amy Jordan Cronin

My fortieth birthday is imminent. I tell myself that age is just a number and that 40 is a glorious age to reach, a milestone denied to many. 

Yet this birthday symbolizes so much more. 

While I exalt the virtues of a confident body image to my children, each time I stare at my own reflection my confidence droops. Things that once were perky are now saggy. Eyes that were clear and bright look dull in the mirror. Hair, once glossy, is dry from too many chemicals meant to mask grey hair. All of it reminds me I’m on the fast-track to the big Four-O.  

I consider my options. Among my girlfriends (can we still be considered girls?), age is the new topic of conversation over coffee or drinks. One friend advocates for the easiest way to feel younger: just look younger. Restore, revive, renew. I nod in agreement. Should I buy a pair of the leather leggings all the twentysomethings seem to be wearing, squeezing my love handles into sweaty oblivion? Should anyone ever?

My best friend’s response to the aging process has been to dabble in body piercings. She pierced her nipples, much to her husband’s delight and my absolute horror. My nipples and I have been through a lot together. From peeping seductively through sheer tops in my twenties to feeding my babies in my thirties, they’ve been good to me. I don’t feel justified in assaulting them with a sharp implement in the hope of reclaiming youth and frivolity. 

Should I follow my cousin’s example and make the ever-popular trip down Botox Lane? While my fear of needles was rapidly overcome the day I needed an epidural during excruciating labor, I’m not sure I want one brandished near my eyes and lips. Same goes for my nipples.

Still, when my husband moves towards me I wonder if he misses my pre-baby body, unmarked by the trials of childbirth. Does he miss the unlined face, my brow less furrowed, from the time when responsibilities were so much lighter to carry?

I wear my impending entry into the next decade as I would a scarf around my neck on a cold day. I’m grateful for it, and that gratitude warms me, yet sometimes it feels a little too tight and it takes my breath away. 

So, last week, with bated breath, I went to one of those hip boutiques and tried on leather leggings. The lighting was harsh and unfamiliar music blared from hidden speakers. The assistant was plumped and preened into terrifying Kardashian-esque perfection. The dressing room felt tighter than the leather pants, and after what felt like an hour of panting and contorting trying to get into the things, I was ready to give up. Just as I managed to pull them slightly past my knees, the curtain whipped back, and the shop assistant inquired how it was all going. 

“Well, I’m nearly 40 years old and I’m trying to squeeze into a child’s pair of pants, so not great,” I joked, desperate to keep my tears away. 

The copious amount of filler in her lips kept her from smiling, but her eyes were sympathetic. I grimaced, knowing she could read the sheer discontent of being my age. Almost 40. Middle-aged. She sensed the full extent of my doubt that I could even shop in a young person’s clothing store anymore. 

Her words of comfort reached my soul as if they had fallen from the lips of the Dalai Lama. They have stayed with me, offering me consolation in dark moments, guiding my hand as I pluck out stray grey hairs, wrapping around me as I wriggle into Bridget Jones-style knickers. 

“Honey, be kind to yourself.”

Gears inside my heart clicked into place. Surely it would be easier to embrace the changes life brings to body and soul, to offer myself the love I give to others? My attraction to my husband has never wavered, although he, too, is getting older, yet I reserve my loathing of aging exclusively for myself. Why?  

If we have gratitude for life, we must accept aging too. Fighting what naturally occurs is the epitome of wasting time. Just as time ticks ever forward, our bodies move steadfastly toward old age.

Aging isn’t to be feared. Self-criticism is. The challenge is to still the inner voice that bemoans every wrinkle. I have read the self-help books, watched the TED Talks, and experimented with therapy to help silence that voice when it shouts, “You’re too old, not pretty enough, not good enough.” All my efforts pale in comparison to the startling, simple wisdom of that shop assistant. 

I will be kind to myself.

I bought the leather leggings.

About the Writer:
Amy Jordan Cronin is a mum, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, and a writer. A graduate of business management, she has taken time out to focus on being a mum. An avid diary-keeper since she was young, Amy writes to meditate and she adores the sense of wellbeing that comes from both reading and writing. Amy is a fan of thrillers and crime novels, and a huge fan of authors Ian Rankin and Lee Child. She will soon have a short story published in Woman’s Way and is working on the final draft of her first novel, a thriller.

By Catherine Palmer

You might think your personal essay is complete, but wait until you try this twist! I’m going to show (not tell) you how to deconstruct, reduce, remix, and shape your essay so that it feels like you’re writing a new one from scratch. Sure, that’s a lot of work, but think of it like this: roast chicken is perfectly fine, but revision pot pie is submittable!

Why leave well enough alone when you can do better? Tighter sentences, a more logical flow, and a pithier epiphany can only enhance the flavor of your story. If you’re tired of leftover clichés, revision pot pie is for you! I make a lot of this pot pie, so I should know.

To begin, I hole myself up, not bothering to shower or dress for several heart-wrenching days while I slice and dice what I thought was a perfectly fine essay. It’s so satisfying to take the meat off the bones, shred sentences, toss entire paragraphs, and turn my hard work into something unrecognizable on its way to being fantastic—or at least finished.

My family loves my revision pot pie, but honestly, I find the effort even more gratifying when I can share it with strangers. Here are some of my favorite revision pot pie tips:

1. If you don’t have a solid draft on hand, start with a previously finished piece. My friend Joan likes to take an essay she’s already published and rip it to shreds.
2. To make a crust of confessions especially flaky, open a bottle of wine, sit on the kitchen floor, and remember your childhood. This trick never fails to produce layer upon layer of trauma.
3. Revision pot pie is best when it has had time to rest. Start long before your deadline so you can go back to it again and again. . .and again.

Recipe

PREP TIME:         Your life up until this moment.

COOK TIME:       Usually several days. Could be weeks. Or you might never finish

CUISINE:             Personal essay

SERVES:              Everyone who takes a bite

Ingredients

For the crust:

• 2 1/2 cups self-doubt
• 1 tablespoon therapy
• 1 teaspoon tears
• 1 cup cold hard truth, cut into bite sized pieces (makes them easier to swallow)
• A splash of cold water
• 1/2 cup regret (see recipe for substitute if GF*)
• 1 painful memory, lightly beaten

For the filling:

• 1 perfectly fine essay
• comments from 2 medium workshops
• 3 scenes, minced
• 3 cups (or more) new writing
• 1 heaping cup characterization
• 1/2 cup diced dialogue
• 4 heaping tablespoons of detail
• reflection to taste

(*Guilt Free)

Instructions

1. To make the crust, pour tears, self-doubt, and years of therapy onto a blank page. Splash your face with cold water before folding in regret. You may substitute fear for regret if you are GF. Add cold hard truth and use a sharp red pencil to cut, cut, cut until the truth is all that remains. Form into a ball and chill.
2. For the filling, pick through workshop comments thoughtfully, discarding duplicates and suggestions that make no sense. Toss the essay into your emotional blender and use the Track Changes attachment to blend comments until all scenes are totally minced. Pour off any defensiveness that may have surfaced.
3. Place the minced scenes on the back burner, allowing the comments to simmer with your essay until the meat separates from the bones. Set the bones aside (you’ll need those later) and hack what remains to bits to create a meaty essay stew. Cool off, then skim the fat from the top.  
4. Over three cups of coffee, pull 2,000 additional words out of thin air. Add generous amounts of characterization, dialogue, and detail, and season with plenty of reflection. Don’t skimp on the reflection! Fold new writing into the essay stew and bring it to a simmer, stirring continuously to release the full flavor of each ingredient. This might take some time.
   
   A quick note of caution: Making a revision pot pie is tedious, and you may grow impatient with the process. If it feels like it is becoming too difficult, resist the temptation to throw in the towel, wash a load of towels, shop on-line for new towels, or attempt towel origami. A short break to stretch or rehydrate can be helpful, but too much procrastination is the enemy of a successful (i.e., finished) revision pot pie. Stick to it! I promise it will be worth the effort.
   
   
5. When the filling is ready, it’s time to give your essay stew some structure. Adjust the bones you saved in Step 3 on a lightly floured surface and place the ball of truth you made in Step 1 at the center. Use a rolling pen to connect the two, shaping into a smooth narrative arc. Gently place the result into a 12-point, Times New Roman template.
6. Trim any overhanging words, then pour the essay stew gently into the template, discarding any fatty bits. Some writers grow attached to these extra bits, but cut them out. You can save them—they might be just right for a quick and easy weeknight poem!  
7. Brush with a wash of painful memories and then let your revision pot pie bake for a few days.
8. Repeat steps 4 to 8 as necessary.

I hope this recipe helps you rediscover the joy of slow editing like it has for me. I used to be a fast-edit junkie. It was easier to drive through the work of revising. But a diet of fast essays left me feeling bloated…yet still hungry an hour later. Now that I’m losing that stubborn first-draft weight, I feel more satisfied without the bulk.

Just imagine enjoying juicy details, crisp dialogue, and tender scene-setting all wrapped in a crust of flaky confessions, in the comfort of your own home. In fact, with this recipe for revision, you may never leave the house again!

About the Writer:
Catherine Palmer has been a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, and a single mom. She was a college drop-out, then in her 30s an adult night-school student who earned a BA in English and an MA in Marketing Communications, both with high honors. She spent three decades in corporate marketing before reinventing herself as a writer and a graduate student at Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She blogs about her midlife reinvention, becoming re-inspired, and life in Vermont at asmuchheart.com.

By Allison Landa

You wanted it to be a miscarriage and so it was.

It was just some blood. You’d seen worse. It was a little bit of cramping. Nothing you couldn’t handle. An interruption in an otherwise stultifying and ordinary day. Under most circumstances that might be welcome.

You walked out of the bathroom and made the pronouncement. Your husband looked up from the work-issued laptop he carried home weeks ago. Your senses were on red alert, expecting something, unsure what. The air tasted of dust; the few passersby were glacial in their movements, hesitant and jerky as a puppet worked by a nervous handler.

You wanted it to be a miscarriage because you wanted to believe your body worked the way others did, that it didn’t have The Condition. Sometimes pregnancies were viable. Other times they meant the body flushed away tissue and promise. Life rolled on, just like the ball your son threw tumbled around the street.

“It could be anything,” my husband said. “Don’t immediately go to the negative.”

What he didn’t realize was for you it wasn’t necessarily a negative. If that was what happened—if you were pregnant—you hadn’t even realized it. There were none of the signs you’d seen in the past: the loss of appetite, the all-day nausea requiring lots and lots of ginger chews from Trader Joe’s. You used to love grocery shopping, the hunt and peck, the comparison of list to haul, what you wanted versus what you could get. Now COVID had wrought lines, determined and forced normalcy. When someone greeted you, it was as if the social contract had broken and shattered atop your head. You mumbled something and moved on.

Did you want to bring a child into this uncertain world? By the time your last and only pregnancy wrapped up, you were at the doctor’s five out of seven days per week. It wouldn’t be different this time. There would be testing, ultrasounds, perinatal appointments. There would be concerns and hesitations. And the outside world.

You sat down on your chair. Your husband called it the Good Chair and compared to the rest of the secondhand furniture in your apartment, it was—an easy chair whose massage function had mercifully died just as it grew less relaxing and more seizure-inducing. For once, you missed that feature. You’d have given it a try again. It might have helped with your cranky lower back, which had been achy since you woke up. Even if it didn’t budge the pain, it might have made you forget about it, which would be almost just as good.

“I looked it up,” you said. Your voice sounded brassier than normal, defensive. There were signs, right? The bleeding, the pain. You wanted to suffer, you needed the distraction. Maybe if you felt as though something unjust had happened to you, something unprecedented and unwanted, you could come to terms with what was happening in the world outside.

“It’s the Internet,” he said. “You can’t trust anything there. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying you’re right. I’m saying you need to find someone who knows what they’re talking about, not some wing nut on Reddit.”

You called the advice nurse at Kaiser Health. She was brisk but friendly, tired but professional. “At 45,” she said, “it’s highly unlikely it was a miscarriage. It could be a slipped IUD. It could be breakthrough bleeding, which is a sign of menopause.”

Menopause? Now? You would still surreptitiously play with Barbies given the chance. When did you get old enough for menopause?

“In maybe eight or ten years,” the nurse said, and you relaxed a little. What you wanted to tell her was you needed proof that you were normal. After all these years, all these diagnoses, all the times the doctors talked about elevated testosterone or infertility, after taking prescription after prescription, even after conceiving seemingly out of the blue, you still needed reassurance you were normal, subject to fate and foment, capable of conception, even if you couldn’t always carry it to completion.

The power lay in the negative, your reason for everything. The moments when you welcomed the marital spat, the twisted ankle, the child who didn’t quite make it to the potty—they all offered proof that life was real, not perfect, the way you wanted it. Outside showed just how much life had changed, didn’t it? The boarded-up storefronts where you once ate, drank, played. The few remaining businesses plying their wares, practically begging: WE’RE STILL OPEN! Don’t forget about us. Don’t let us sink into the swamp.

The doctor called.

You hung up and buried your face in a pillow. It wasn’t even one of your good pillows. It was limp and flat, paltry. Your husband stood over you, mentally wringing his hands. You didn’t blame him. You should be happy. You should be relieved. You should feel this weight lifted, that you didn’t lose more than the world was already collectively losing.

“I wanted,” you said, then paused. How to say what you felt? How to express the inexpressible, the outright foolish? How to make yourself understood when even you yourself didn’t get it?

“Don’t,” he said and pulled you to him. In that moment you realized that understanding transcended specifics. It went straight to the heart of the universal, the human. He didn’t have to know the ins and outs of what you were thinking. It was enough for him to grasp that you felt some element of loss.

Somewhere in the universe there is a child. He or she may have even been yours, in your mind, in your imagination. Somehow their life was prevented, cut short. In some way they gave you the loss you needed. In some sense their absence was the presence you craved.

About the Writer:
Allison Landa is a Berkeley, California-based writer of fiction and memoir whose work has been featured in Business Insider, Parents Magazine, The Guardian US, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post, among others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from St. Mary’s College of California and runs the On the Cusp reading series in San Francisco. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, and she teaches at The Writing Salon in Berkeley.

By Erin Binney

Swatches of sand, nuggets of gravel, and shreds of skin cling to my right forearm, held in place by fresh blood. This is what happens when you’re nearing the end of your run on the bike path, can barely lift your feet, and get felled by a tree root that has cracked and lifted a section of the asphalt: You wind up sprawled out on the shoulder with a not-yet-dried mixed-media collage on your arm.

A woman riding the other way on her bike slows to a stop and asks if I am okay.

“I’m alright,” I grumble as I sit up, embarrassed and in pain. “Thank you.”

When I get home, my husband asks how my run was. I respond by showing him my arm. Although he cringes in sympathy, his first and most pressing concern is “Did anyone see?”

The next time I run, a few days later, I abandon the bike path in favor of my other training ground—the high school track. There, I run into Stella, a woman whose last name I do not know but who I see walking in lane seven from time to time.

“It’s been a while,” she says. “How have you been?”

I tell her I’ve been using the bike path lately, recount my fall, and show her my wound. It’s starting to scab over now, and there’s a bruise the color of an overripe banana connecting it to the tip of my elbow.

“That looks like it hurts,” she says.

“It does,” I answer.

A few days later, I tell my dad about my fall. “Are you sure you should still be running at your age?” he asks from the other end of the phone. (I am 44.)

The next time I see Stella at the track, about a week after my tumble, she reaches into her coat pocket and produces a leaf from the aloe plant in her kitchen, which she has carefully protected in plastic wrap.

“I was hoping I would see you today. This will be good for your skin,” she explains as she rubs the juice on my arm. As a 21st-century woman, I know I should be more enlightened. I know I should be cheering for the female CEOs and astronauts. But some days, I’m grateful for all the female caregivers.

About the Writer:
Erin Binney is a former business reporter, a current copyeditor, and an Olympic hopeful in home organization. She has a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from James Madison University and expects to earn her MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University in 2021. Her piece “Love Takes a Recess” recently won first place in its category in the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors “Excellence in Writing” Competition.

By Loree Griffin Burns

haiku on spring snow
the neighborhood mice were out
before me, scribbling

spring loneliness—
clutching one warm chicken egg
in each cold hand

direct from the clouds
or waylaid by a pin oak
two types of spring rain

the fancy brick house
is empty now; the tulips
don’t seem to notice

riotous yellow—
missing the girl who called it
“for Cynthia”

About the Writer:
Loree writes about science and nature for readers of all ages. Back in 2011, during a rainy vacation in Rhode Island, she and her family stopped into a used book sale at the local public library. That’s where she picked up a used copy of haiku master Clark Strand’s Seeds of a Birch Tree on a whim, for fifty cents. She’s been counting syllables on her fingers ever since. You can read more about Loree’s children’s books, essays, and haiku at loreeburns.com.

By Suzanne Strempek Shea

Thirty years ago, I ate my final meal as a carnivore. Long after everyone else cut into their T-bones barbecued on my cousin Richie’s gas grill, I stared at mine, the last one for 365 days.

That was my original plan: one meatless year. Over the previous 364 days, I’d frequently found myself in the company of fit and fun vegetarians. As someone raised on meat in every meal and often for snacks, I was intrigued. Then I came across a newspaper article on the realities of veal. As an animal lover, that was enough to convince me to hop onto the vegetarian platform.

“I’m going to have the eggplant parmesan,” I started announcing at dinners out. “Because do you know how they get veal?” Even if no one expressed interest, I’d begin reciting the harsh realities of a veal calf’s brief life.

One night, a friend countered, “Well, what do you think they do to the rest of the animals on the menu?”

Point made, taken, known.

During my youngest years, my family kept a coop to supply poultry for the restaurant we owned. I was well aware that “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” wasn’t just a cliché. Through my college years I fished, and I also worked on a deep-sea charter, where the pre-death flopping of the catch was just one more sound in an enjoyable day.

As a New Englander, I attended enough lobster dinners (more accurately called lobster boils) to know that the normally blackish-green lobster shells weren’t orange from sunburn. Back then, I didn’t know what happened to cows or pigs or sheep in the slaughterhouse; my research left me almost regretting learning about electrocution and gassing.

I might have started my meatless year with hopes of looking like my perky veg pals, but I have continued it to this day in consideration of animals other than the dogs and horses that I have known and loved. I simply don’t want another being to die so I can eat.

I’ve spent nearly three decades learning (and explaining and defending now and then). Who knew broccoli soup is basically chicken broth with broccoli thrown in? Or that cheese isn’t a vegetarian option because the rennet used to produce it comes from the stomachs of calves, goats, or sheep? I found out humans are called omnivores because we’re able to exist on a diet of meat or plants, or both, a fact I recite each time I get a cold and my mom advises, “You need a steak.”

I’ve tried new recipes, starting with a fabulous nut loaf in Diet for a Small Planet, my first veg bible. I stopped announcing why I was ordering pasta instead of pork. Now, I pick the moments when I tell someone that I consume nothing that has a face or a mother.

Some argue that the asparagus on my plate was another victim of the knife. They ask, “If we’re not to eat them, why did God create all these creatures running through the woods?” If nobody ate meat, I’m asked, what would happen to all the cattle on earth? If I think I’m saving a halibut by not ordering one, don’t I realize that it’s lying dead in the restaurant kitchen anyhow, that it will simply go to the next customer? I’m just one person, they remind me, what difference can one person’s food choices make?

Aren’t they only animals, anyhow?

We can only really save ourselves, I guess. As for anybody—or anything—else, we can only try.

For the 30th anniversary of the way I’ve chosen to eat, I’m considering going vegan for 365. No animal products at all—no dairy, eggs, honey. No wool sweaters or down vests. No face creams, lip balms, or cleaning products an animal might have even glanced at. I stopped buying and wearing leather and down 20 years ago, so my closets are already there. Milk-containing milk chocolate might be a slower conversion for me. It’s all a process.

If I turn around to look back on my life, I’d like to see 30 years of lives that might have been spared due to my not ordering the kind of food I gorged on during my first 31 years: Flintstonian-sized turkey legs, pillowy scallops, Polish ham sliced thin.

In anthropomorphisms that recently had an acquaintance rolling her eyes over my years of “not eating the best kind of food,” I like to imagine that turkeys are gobbling their thanks, scallops are clapping in the mud, and pigs are grunting a Happy 30th Anniversary to this one little person and her one little decision.

About the Writer:
Suzanne Strempek Shea is the facilitator of the summer Creative Writing Field Seminar in Ireland, the director of the undergraduate creative writing program, and the Writer-in-Residence at Bay Path University. The latest of her eleven books are the biography This Is Paradise and the novel Make a Wish But Not For Money. Her memoirs include Songs from a Lead-lined Room, Shelf Life, and Sundays in America. Suzanne won the 2000 New England Book Award for contributions her books have made to the literature of the region. She’s been featured on NBC’s “Today,” on National Public Radio, and in USA Today, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in publications including The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, Yankee, and The Bark.

By Casey Lane

What one-night stands have to teach us

The walk of shame is a sobering act. It’s a moment of pure clarity in which we, for those few steps, that short drive, that time in the shower, are awakened, by euphoria or contrast, to the dispassionate truth of who we are.

Expectation

If you’ve ever lain in bed, the sheets draped over your legs and waist, the moonlight illuminating the curve of your spine while he rubs your back gently, the thick coarseness of his hands reminding you of your femininity, every hill and valley of your body a landscape of his desire, while the gentle smile of peaceful satisfaction rests on your lips, then what I have to say may not interest you.

Reality

But if you’ve ever laid in bed, lifting the sheets up and over your hips—locking them beneath your armpit as if tenting your body for sin—his hand flopped open, unknowingly on the back of your head, scratching your scalp like he’s rewarding a dog who’s just learned to sit, your eyes using the moonlight to scan the room for casualties—a shirt on the undusted nightstand beside you, pants in tango with whatever towel he’s calling a quilt—as his phone rings, its display showing the name of his best girlfriend, the cheerfulness of his “Hello” cutting the stilted silence of your immoral affliction as you slide out of bed and restore your underwear to duty, dress in the bathroom, then with a quick smile of forced satisfaction, wave goodbye while he looks at you confused (the phone still at his ear) and he half-heartedly mouths, “Where are you going?” while you keep moving, grab your purse, take a final sickening look around the room, tiptoe down the stairs, out the front door, and jog towards your car in Guest Parking, I’m here for you.

Awakening

I have too many stories like that, stories about nights where I’ve come to my senses only after having them pounded back into me. Nights when I’ve had to leave my assumptions about love and return home to the sanctity of regret. Nights that have ended with me standing in the shower, the steam filling my lungs while the heat of the water softens the shame on my skin—pieces of loneliness and self-abandonment swirling down the drain at my feet.

Nights when two felt like one, until I felt like enough.

Nights when I’d return to bed—my own this time—cleaned, lotioned, and pajamaed, the cottons of my clothes and flowered bedspread mixing, hugging my body as they held me tighter, filling the gaps beneath my knees and hips while my head rested on a pillow, the moonlight peeking through another set of blinds—my own this time—dropping breadcrumbs of light on a clear carpeted floor, mapping a route from my bed to the stars.

Acceptance

There’s nowhere to hide when we run from ourselves, no persona we can don that doesn’t rinse in the rain.

The moments between his house and my own were a whirlwind of consciousness. Moments when embarrassment and pride swirled like a tornado gathering force from both sides before finally settling somewhere in between, a vacant and undeveloped space where acceptance wasn’t an admission of guilt but the first step towards love, where the urge to retreat brought me from doubt to disillusion.

That ill-timed exit became my first act of self-care. In that moment, the scratch on my head wasn’t from his hand, but a soulful itching for sudden escape, a gentle nudge from within, ushering me from darkness to awareness, from my back to my feet, from his bed to my own.

And so I walked — shamefully, regretfully, and truthfully—home.

About the Writer:
Casey Lane is a writer, blogger, and International Program Manager for a Los Angeles-based marketing agency. She has self-published a children’s book, Lucky Love & His Moms, and she is currently writing her memoirs. Casey is also working toward her MFA in creative nonfiction writing at Bay Path University.

By Andy Castillo

I enter a world of burnt rubber and bumping tires. Rolling luggage and passersby whiz around me, tumbling toward their destinations in a frenzied hurry. Announcements in Russian come rapid-fire over the loudspeakers, reverberating through the crowded St. Petersburg train terminal in a chorus of noise that’s accented by the occasional train whistle.

On the platform, mist swirls around idling trains, mingling with the savory aroma of frying cheburek (meat turnovers), shawarma (wraps filled with roasted meat), and pirozhki (buns stuffed with various fillings), all infused with the stench of cigarette smoke.

Ahead of me, a young woman steps hurriedly from a train car. She’s met by a well-dressed man carrying a bouquet of roses. He sweeps her into an intimate embrace. They forget about the roses and fall into each other, overcome by emotion, oblivious to the chaos surrounding them.

They don’t care about bystanders who smile at their affection. They don’t care about Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump or hacking scandals or the Cold War or the horrific death toll Russia suffered in World War II—topics that are ever at the forefront of my mind as a Westerner traveling to Moscow for the first time. The only thing they care about is each other.

It’s a tender moment in a city forged by violence.

Although more than 75 years have passed, the sting of the Nazi army’s failed Siege of Leningrad (as the city was known during World War II) is evident in St. Petersburg’s historic streets and throughout Russia. Traces of the grueling offensive that began in September 1941 are embedded like the remnant shrapnel preserved in the façade of a building, like the Soviet hammer and sickle emblems emblazoned on structures ranging from light posts to bridges.

For 872 days, Nazi forces blockaded a city the Germans thought would buckle before winter. But despite extreme hardship and apparently insurmountable odds, the city’s defenders never surrendered. The toll was great; 800,000 civilians died, most from starvation.

In 21st-century St. Petersburg, my sleeper train awaits beside the platform just ahead of me. I climb its steps a few minutes before 9:00 p.m. Inside, narrow hallways crisscross the train. I find my room; there’s a middle-aged man inside.

Aleksei is his name. He is 40 years old and heavy set, with a light floral scarf wrapped loosely around a tweed suit. His shoes have been discarded beneath one of the two small beds in our compartment. He looks at me and smiles a broad, toothy smile, then takes a sip from a glass of hot tea resting on a pull-out table. In broken English, he explains that he is traveling for work, to Moscow, where he owns a customs business that deals mostly with European clients. It’s a trip he makes regularly.

“If you’re traveling by train, you must have black tea with lemon. Only on the train,” Aleksei says. Then he removes a bottle of Johnny Walker from his jacket pocket, takes a swig, and orders dinner for us: Caviar and toast, sauerkraut, sausage, pickles, ketchup, and spicy mustard, topped off with two shots of vodka.

“Forty percent only. Not 38,” he says, taking another swig of his whiskey.

Drinking is an intrinsic part of Russian culture. While growing up about 10 kilometers outside St. Petersburg, Aleksei says he made homemade vodka and sauerkraut with his family. They soaked cabbage in water, vodka, and a little bit of salt for about six hours before mashing and transferring it to a three-liter bottle to ferment for six months. The finished sauerkraut’s flavor was intense and harsh—like the country where it was made.

Aleksei, however, represents Russia’s softer side, one that’s unfamiliar to me.

“If you come to Russia, you will find friendly people,” he says.

The compartment door opens and a waitress enters with a tray of food. I try to pay Aleksei for my share, but he refuses my money, waving a limp hand in my direction.

Then he picks up the two shots on the tray and gives one to me.

“Hello vodka,” he says, and throws it back. I follow suit.

In Russia, strict social rules surround the serious business of drinking vodka. According to Aleksei, the first shot of the night (which must always be consumed in one gulp) is proceeded by the toast, “hello vodka”; the second, “to us”; the third, “for family”; the fourth, “for friendship.”

The food disappears almost as fast as the first shot of vodka. Aleksei orders another round.

“To us!” he shouts, and we drink again. Glassy-eyed, he orders more. If he were standing up, he would be staggering. For my part, I’m feeling OK, and for a minute I’m proud of myself for outpacing him. Then I realize he’s probably been drinking all day.

“Why is vodka so popular in Russia?” I ask.

“It’s normal. Vodka is,” Aleksei trails off and smiles, then admits, almost sheepishly, as if he’s telling me a great secret, “I like wine better.”

For vacations, he and his wife often tour the wine countries of Spain and Italy. Personally, Aleksei says, he thinks vodka is overrated, but it’s tradition—especially on the train—in Russia.

The third round is delivered. “For family,” he says, and we drink again.

My head swims. I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or the rushing train. I lie back on my bed and check the time. It’s nearly 1:00 a.m. I need to sleep and say as much before stumbling down the narrow hallway to the tiny bathroom to brush my teeth.

When I return, a fourth round is on the table. “For friendship,” Aleksei says, looping my arm through his own and tipping back his glass.

The vodka burns down my throat.

About the Writer:
Andy Castillo is an experienced newspaper journalist who has worked for a few publications in western Massachusetts and as staff travel writer for GoNOMAD Travel. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s degree in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University. He lives in Florence with his wife, Brianna.

By Judy Bolton-Fasman

The first time I had to socially distance, I was six years old with a severe case of strep throat. “Look at those pustules,” the doctor muttered as he gagged me with a tongue depressor. To this day, I cannot stand eating ice cream on a stick.

I lived in my parents’ bedroom that long spring, watching black and white television. I wanted company and wrote to my aunt 40 miles away to send me a Barbie doll. My parents fought when my father wrapped me in a bedspread and sat me on the driveway in a beach chair “to take sun.” My mother cried. She was sure that germs lurked everywhere. She was certain I would contract scarlet fever.

“Fresh air is good for her,” my father bellowed.

My father wanted to cure me. My mother wanted to convalesce me. I acquired my fearsome, what-if imagination from my mother. Disaster and danger were as ubiquitous as grass and sky. Throughout my childhood, I rarely left the house without holding her hand. When I was sick, she told me not to leave her double bed. And for the most part, I didn’t.

Now, my 85-year-old mother lives in a nursing home. I don’t tell her that there has been an outbreak of the coronavirus in her facility. I don’t tell her that she’s tested positive for COVID-19. Thus far, she’s asymptomatic. On the telephone she tells me that her 100-year-old roommate, Sadie, coughed throughout the night, and then went away.

“Where is she now?” I ask.

“En el cementerio,” my mother says matter-of-factly in her native Spanish. To think, only a thin curtain separated my mother from Sadie’s mortality.

Illustrations of the virus look like demented tinker toys. Red pieces of wood that resemble golf tees are stabbed into gray pockmarked balls. These invisible and viral tinker toys are on doorknobs, on the mail, on the credit card I hand to the cashier at the grocery store. They’re on the steering wheel of the car.

I don’t take my cell phone with me when I walk the dog in case an errant germ lands on my screen. On one of those walks I see my neighbor weeding in front of his house. He forgets for a moment and steps towards me. I stagger backward. “Yes. Sorry—of course,” he stammers.

I am a few months shy of 60—that boundary between the biblical sounding decree of “who shall live and who shall die.” My husband, who is 60, grocery shops during early morning hours designated for senior citizens. “Do they think old people don’t sleep?” he grouses.

People talk about the “silver linings” of this pandemic. I imagine most of those silver linings have teeth like a buzz saw—a macabre toothy grin. Get too close, and that’s how a limb gets severed. But I love waking up to my sweet husband. In normal times he works out of town during the week. Now, I love hearing his voice booming through the house as he conducts business on video-conferences. He’s a scientist responsible for organizing coronavirus testing sites.

At the home, my mother’s television is always on, broadcasting in the midst of her room’s fluorescent dusk. She checks for pandemic news all day. At night she falls into a restless sleep listening to pandemic bulletins. But nothing on the news is as harrowing for her as the forced quarantine she endures in her six-foot by nine-foot room.

 “Estoy encarcelada.” I’m imprisoned, my mother says.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve wanted to hold my mother’s hand. But right now, I long to do just that.

I’m anxious about being housebound. I’m terrified of becoming the agoraphobic I was in my early 20s. That’s when I moved to New York City to teach myself to be in the world. My cover was that I went there for love and then for graduate school. But the truth is I found comfort in counting my way around the city. I memorized avenues and was mindful of the numbered streets. I ended up living in the city for nine years.  

The news hammers away at me. New York City is the epicenter of the virus. So many people die—young, old, even children—no one is spared. Refrigerated trucks are converted into makeshift morgues. Fifth, Madison, Park—avenues that are tumbleweed empty now.  Yellow police tape does the job of vacating playgrounds and parks.  New York, where I taught myself to be free, is a deathtrap now. 

In Spanish, corona means “crown.”

In astronomy, there is the sun’s luminous corona.

When I visited my son in Spain this past winter, we drove through A Coruña, the largest town in Galicia.

When I was a little girl, my mother told me a story about the time King Solomon, took off his crown and placed it on his mother’s head. There is even a Ladino song with the refrain, Que el coronó, a el su madre, en día de alegria, de su corazón. “When the king crowned his mother, it was a day of joy, a day close to his heart.”

“That is how you honor a mother,” said my own mother.

Corazón, corona.

When my mother calls today, I hear her panting on the other end of the line. I become terrified that she is finally presenting with corona symptoms.

“When is this going away?”

It takes me a moment to understand she’s okay, that she is talking about the virus in general.

“When are you coming to see me? Te extraño.”

On the surface extrañar means “to miss.” Really, though, it’s a deep longing for something one will never have again. It’s a word my mother used whenevershe talked about Cuba. “Hay Cuba como te extraño.”

“I don’t exactly know when we’ll see each other again,” I say to her softly, lovingly. “But we will get through this,” I whisper, entirely unsure of what I have promised.

About the Writer:
Judy Bolton-Fasman is a four-time winner of the American Jewish Press Association’s Simon Rockower Award for her essays. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times (op-ed page), the Times’ family and parenting section (formerly “Motherlode”), the Boston Globe, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Superstition Review, Lunch Ticket, Split Lip Review, Modern Loss, WBUR’s “Cognoscenti” essay page, The Forward, O Magazine, and the Huffington Post. She has been awarded fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, the Mineral School in Washington State (2018 Erin Donovan Fellow), and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (Alonzo G. Davis Fellow for Latinx Writers 2020).