Fall 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 4

Today started as it always does on Mondays.

The onset of another week stretched taut. The day is already swelling, and the diary in my head is filling up, aswirl with scrawling lists jostling for space in my mind and my laptop and my notebook. All the must-dos and should-have-dones of all the tasks ahead, until they are opaque and blur into a buzzing black midge cloud, and I can’t see through it or above it or below it.

When Walton walked into the Seven-Eleven for a bottle of water, he had no idea he was stepping straight into an armed robbery. No sooner was he in the door than he was on the floor, the victim of a wine bottle to the temple. He hit the dirty linoleum like a sack of potatoes, his head oozing copious quantities of blood.

One robber hollered for the cashier to open the safe, who swore up and down in a difficult-to-understand German accent, that she couldn’t. Who would give a minimum wage employee access to all safe. Deposits only.” The thief smacked her in the face with a gloved open palm. “Fill-the-bag-now!” He spoke slow and staccato so she’d comprehende. Crying now, she comprehended. The other robber kept the hostages under control with a weathered, sawed-off shotgun.

The examination room was cool and well ventilated, decorated in shades of blue, gray, and aquamarine, reminding Annie of sky, shell, and ocean. The echocardiograph equipment gleamed bone white, with shiny black buttons. Annie was tired of hospitals and medical testing but fascinated by the idea of a sonograph—especially an echocardiogram—creating pictures from sound, like sea mammals navigating, using an echo to draw the shape of the unseen. Annie closed her eyes and imagined a dolphin doctor in a swishy, white coat employing chatter, pings, and clicks to shape the data. Maybe a pod of technicians playing call and response, like the children's game. "Marco" they yell, and her body yells back, "Polo." Ping, Ping—Marco! The heart replies—Polo!

Out there among the falling snowflakes, I look closely, but I can’t find myself. I am there somewhere. Billions of snowflakes showered down as I watched mesmerized through the bay window. They’re stunning and beautiful. I am one of those snowflakes, but I certainly don’t feel like I fit those descriptors.

Like the lacy ice crystals that branch out to form a flake of snow, there is a disease splintering into fragments within my body. Like a snowflake’s hexagon, I live with six sides. Six symptoms that take turns with me. Being a snowflake has blown away the woman I worked hard to become.

Once, I dreamed my mother was a radio
broadcasting from the belly of the sea
Each wave was a frequency of grief
and I tuned in with my bones

When I woke, my hands were covered in static
small ghosts of touch
echoes of things that never happened
but still hurt when I breathed

When the boy with a cybernetic implant in his temple developed a massive hulk of malignant cells in his stomach, I finally gave up on human bodies.

After half a century of exploring hosts, I, naively optimistic about human ingenuity, believed just as the enthusiastic scientists in their little papers and press conferences did, that cybernetics could be the solution to bodily dysfunction that we’d all been awaiting, me and humans both. Cybernetics could correct fluctuations in the body and brain; it could regulate and control the bodily functions that would inevitably break down with time, age, and effort.

Until the boy developed his death knell tumor, his body had been a near-perfect host. Athletic, but not so much that he was prone to injury. Young, but with a fully developed frontal cortex. Occasional headaches from overwork at the laboratory on Balthen Station, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a swallow of water and an anti-inflammatory.

Our Brain, who art in overdrive,
hallowed be thy playlist.

Deliver us from the chip aisle—
that crucible of chaos,
where the lights pierce like unsolicited advice
and every bag whispers crunch in tongues.

Spare me the cereal section,
a shrine to indecision,
where cartoon mascots leer like used-car prophets

=================Welcome!=================

Please take a good look at the images in

this folder. If they do not trigger any

names or memories, read on.

You’re probably scared and very confused,

but it’ll be okay.

Hopefully, Set or Aeries will find their

way back soon and can onboard you

properly. But, until then, you’ll have to

manage on your own.

=============Why You’re Here==============

You are an alter

(“personality”/headmate/etc.) residing in

a body alongside several other

individuals. This is our brain’s trauma

response, via dissociative identity

disorder (DID).

Everyone Will Be Disabled Someday - So Why Are We Ignoring the American Disability Collapse?

It blows my mind when people do not care about accessibility issues. Don’t you know you will be disabled someday

if you don’t die first? The reality of being disabled in America is so much worse than you could imagine — especially

recently. I had to break it to someone struggling with their health today. They were really upset by what I had to say.

Meanwhile, someone else I know said they don’t notice disability issues because it’s not interesting to them.

Friend, taxes aren’t interesting — you still have to file them. Sometimes, you just have to care about something

because it’s the right thing to do.

When I was 7 years old, I was, for the first and only time in my life, grounded by my father.

The incident for which I was punished began when my best friend Ben and I decided to rappel out of his second-story window on a rope tied around a bedpost. Ben and I both

had parents who worked in wilderness education, and we considered ourselves to be more or less experts in all matters of adventure. Being conscientious outdoors people, we drew detailed plans for our descent in crayon on a sketchpad on the carpet. We then, very carefully and using an array of sophisticated knots, tied one end of a ball of string around my waist, wrapped it several times around the bedpost, and tied the other end to Ben, who held onto the rest of the ball to lower me safely and smoothly to the ground.

My stomach is a trash can. For years I said this, half-jokingly, to everyone around me during those awkward and self-conscious days of early adolescence. Back when self deprecation was my primary mode of communication. Back when I wanted people to like me so badly that I was willing to put myself down in return for a modicum of social harmony and acceptance.

“Are you done with that?” I’d ask before my companion had even taken the fork out of their mouth. Last bites, last sips—all of it went to me; I was a veritable food vacuum, a raccoon half-hidden in the alley waiting with a beady glint in her eye. I had all my normal daytime meals like breakfast and lunch, but the true feasting wouldn’t begin until I returned home from school at the end of the day. I had my after-school snack and dinner, of course, but also second dinner, midnight meal, witching-hour soup, before-bed bites, and if I happened to wake up in the middle of the night, I would sneak out into the kitchen for a nibble of cheese and ham like a little house mouse.

While the sky swallowed the whole of light in one slow breath,

the villagers, along with their ignorance,

knelt beside beds made of straw and tiny bones;

outside,

a creature forlorn paced the crooked stone paths

soul-searching, enticing all empty vessels to bewitch, curse,

make good a bad omen.

Travellers chase busses,

suitcases rattling along stony streets

The sun is half lit like a dying candle.

The sky blushes as you arrive,

Rosy cheeked clouds climb to stiff peaks,

Palm trees sway like dizzy drunks.

I should probably start with the seashells. Not the ordinary kind you find washed up near the pier, chipped and barnacle-pocked, with sand clinging in wet clumps, no. These shells are maps. Maps carved in raised dots and ridges like Braille, except sharper, almost painful if you run your finger too long over them.

I have a box of them under my bed. The box used to hold shoes, cheap sneakers with green stripes. Now it rattles every time I slide it out. I tell people it’s coins, or bolts, or screws, anything but what it really is. Because if anyone knew… well, they’d either laugh or confiscate them. And both feel like death.

coming home

after the accident

there’s something wrong

all appears normal

or, rather, too precisely that

so not the same

Animals bring humans great joy and beautifully enrich our lives. They can also endanger us, sometimes leaving us traumatized and scarred, even dead. For disabled people, animals can be especially vital as they help us deal with tasks non-

disabled take for granted and cope with our special problems. Because animals are especially important to disabled people, it is vital to clarify the differences between service animals, emotional support animals, therapy animals, and pets.