October 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 5

Eleven of us had gathered in the living room, which was entirely too many for the cramped space. I sought refuge in the dark kitchen, observing the ritual of scrolling. My elbows pressed into the kitchen table, a knee on the chair, craning my neck toward the phone.

Evelyn entered and flipped the overhead light on, but I forced my body to remain rigid. Her eyes widened when she spotted me, and then a smile formed and her shoulders softened. She opened two cabinets before finally finding the glasses. She ran the faucet for three seconds before placing the glass under the stream. That’s how you flush out the toxins in the water. All the invisible build-up of germs and rust and fecal matter and covid. Surely the pipes had begun to flake, right? There’s no way those metal tubes buried underground were as clean as we all pretended they were.

“That’s a nice sweater,” she said.

I glanced down, remembering that I have a body. Arms, legs, feet even. Jesus, how long since I’d seen my own feet? The sweater was quite sleek.

At age five, I fell from a suburban maple. I’ve been falling ever since.

Most days I plant my feet on the floor. The dead can no longer do this.

Fear is the sweater I pull on after waking—one my mother knitted as a child.

It is time to let go. I cannot let go.

Insanity is contagious. I am not immune.

My parents’ match was made on the outskirts of heaven. This did not save me.

I was born in the city of Happily-Ever-After—a population long in decline.

Patience is a garden to be cultivated. One must be so inclined.

I met Todd online. I was tired of only having my romantic options be the other graduate school students in my PhD, an incestuous group who often had dysfunctional romances with each other. I gathered the energy to return to online dating, which I had used before to find queer women in my small hometown – a true challenge that necessitated technological assistance! – this time choosing Lava Life.

I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to date anyone outside of my city, Edmonton; my graduate school friends and their romantic situations seemed exhausting, and I longed for something more straight forward. But I saw Todd’s profile picture  and was intrigued, despite the fact that he lived in Calgary. He asked thoughtful questions that far outpaced the typical “what you up to” I’d been receiving from other men.

That night, at the Iowa State Fair,

my head throbs, like a balloon ready

to explode. “I want to go home,” I cry.

Mother won’t listen.  “You nagged us,”

she screams.  “So here we are.”

Bert lifts me onto his shoulders.  I like

riding high until Renee begs for a turn.

Finally, we find the car and drive home.

“Polio,” doctors announce next morning.

Make it weird.

Scream at me

In the middle of the street

and tell me that part of me

is also part of you

and how

we should recognise each other.

Rest your cane against my chair

and hear my stories about the queerness

The part when I grab your face like a planet science searches for

too late, hoping for a new body as the alternative. Saying I know this container already, that they clipped the cord to clear its storage; the part with stretch marks

and I, guilty as ever, still needing to be mothered.

I agreed to a year
I do not remember agreeing to.

The terms were written
in a language made mostly of small print.

By opening your eyes,
you consent to morning.

By remaining in bed,
you consent to being late.

By answering how are you?
you consent to the possibility
that someone may believe you.

My primary care doctor tells me to go to the emergency room of one of the two hospitals in my small city. I debate which one will treat me less poorly this time. Will it be the one where, on a previous visit, a surgeon was consulted to decide if I needed an operation on my pancreas that was removed more than a decade ago? He didn’t believe my accounting of my own organs despite the scars that bore evidence of their removal. It’s hard to see the scars from the doorway where he stood, never laying a hand on me, while asserting that no one has ever had their entire pancreas removed before. Or should I go to the other hospital where a nurse told me to “stop being anorexic” when I couldn’t eat the sausage and eggs she brought me for breakfast after  days of vomiting everything I put in my mouth?

In the beginning, everybody wants to be a vampire.

When the government announces the sun’s abnormally rapid trajectory towards the Earth’s surface, everybody is told to become a vampire. Switch to sleeping during the day, and if you can’t, just stay inside. No more business hours in daylight. No more sending your kids out to play in the summer sun. We don’t know what it’ll do to them yet. If you must go out during the day, bring an acrylic umbrella, and remain outside for no longer than fifteen minutes. The temperature is rising every single day.

Everybody promises to become a vampire until they can figure it out. Until they can fix this.

You, afflicted with the vampire’s curse since the age of fourteen, revel in this. None of your life is disrupted; you already lived this way for the longest. How strange, cliched, maybe, that the world’s looming destruction should provide a vampire comfort. But your red eyes can’t help but sparkle, seeing how alive the nights become. Where once silence ruled a twelve-hour blackout, the music of others now sings. Packed streets where once you stalked alone, music where once your own hissing provided your downtown soundtrack. People saying to each other, “Man, this is crazy, right? Right? Guess the night’s not so bad.”

William poured sugar into his coffee, stirred it thoughtfully.

Tom glanced at him.

"How was your weekend?"

William gave a bleak smile.

"Don't ask." Sipped his coffee. "We had a lousy time. Didn't pull into our driveway until two this morning."

"Tired, huh."

"Tom, that's the least of it." William stared out the coffee shop's picture window at afternoon traffic. "It started Friday night when we got to the campground. At the sign-in shack, they said they didn't have a record of my reservation. Or my advance payment. The man who took it over the phone? On vacation."

I was the perfect trad-wife.

Home-cooked meals every night.

Homeschooling curricula color-coded by child.

A house so clean you could eat off the floors (not that anyone ever did).

I sewed Halloween costumes, baked bread from scratch, and never let him see me cry.

And for 24 years, he took it for granted.

Not because he was ungrateful.

Because that’s the deal:

A trad-wife isn’t a partner.

She’s a prop.

I.

We remember the morning she refused to go to the zoo.

She screamed for an hour even though she loved animals.

She ruined the whole day. We tried everything.

It was always something with her.

II.

We remember the screaming. (Was it crying?)

Over shoes. (Was it shoes or pain?)

For an hour. (Was it ten minutes that felt like an hour?)

We tried everything. (Did we ask what she needed?)

It was always like this. (Was it always?)

I lifted two small crutches last night and placed them

by the door. Some say children foretell joy,

and that may be so, but fragile bones strike fear

in my heart. One broke last year and its fracture

left a hollow right in her dreams.

we come over the hill and the trees turn us back

and my brother turns a pack animal with his wet nose

he starts to shake in the nostrils, square in the

shoulders, paw the car floor with his webbed toes

when he can speak, he says it is not the size

or dying, or the wilderness we have known before