In the first year, there was nothing. 

And then there was a year of darkness. Days passed like kidney stones. It was always winter. The air slashed across my cheeks whenever I went outside. The dry crust of salt caked my shoes and weighed me down. There was something deliciously miserable about it. 

The third was nothing. Life moves in duologies and trilogies and sagas and chronicles, and everything happens again, even nothing. 

In the fourth year, it came back. Summer was full of life that wasted away like rotten fruit. The bugs crept out and fed on the decay and brought new life. Every night I was on the couch next to a silent ghost, and the fireworks were loud enough to see. Even when I felt happy, it fizzled away like the red sparks in the night sky. Then the smoke, illuminated by newer ashes, drifted up into the heavens to silence some birds. 

Five was halfway, but halfway points are never truly halfway. One half is always longer than the other. 

It ended at six. Then it began right where it started. The year was like coming back to school after a long break, like I never left. I was in an alternate time, a fourth dimension where everything was different except me. Someone told me that wherever I go, there I am. No point in searching, then. 

Seven was unlucky. In the seventh year, I found a twenty-dollar bill in the parking lot of the gas station. Then I went inside and used the money for lottery tickets for the million dollar jackpot and didn’t win a single one. 

The eighth year was made up of only the important things. Faded sunlight. Old photos with young people. Blue pools. Green lawns. Yellow dogs. Red hair. I saw people I hadn’t seen in eight years, and they looked the same as their yearbook photos but  acted so differently. Never mind that—they looked different but I saw them the same, and they acted the same but I always remembered them differently.

Nine lasted forever. It was darkness. Someone told me the darkest hour is just before dawn. The sun couldn’t rise soon enough. In the meantime, life was dust. It crumbled away in my hands and if I breathed too hard it disappeared. I moved through the world as a phantom, and nobody saw me or felt my presence. It was as if I’d vanished into thin air, as if I was never there at all.

Ten years later. Ten years later. That’s what I keep telling myself: ten years later. Where do you see yourself in ten years? Things won’t be like that—things never end up like you think they’ll be. Sometimes they work out. Usually, it doesn’t seem like they will. Ten years later, I am the same person. The world around me is the same. Years grow like plants. Time boils like water. Someone tells me a watched pot never boils. So I put my face over the steam and stare and stare, hoping it won’t boil, trusting that the roiling bubbles will never form, but no matter how hard I stare—and maybe it happens in between blinks—the water bubbles and bursts and bellows and boils. Someone tells me that ten years later I’d be different. Ten years later, I won’t care about the problems I had ten years before. Ten years later, I tell myself. Ten years later. 

I go to bed and in the morning when I wake up the sun beams through my window and I can hear the birds hoot the same melody they did ten years ago, and my blankets are warm but the day is full of possibility, and I haven’t had that for breakfast in ten years and I can’t tell if it tastes the same, if the flowers smell the same, if the sunlight feels the same, if the birds sound the same, if the colors look the same. Someone tells me that there will always be good and there will always be gray.

Ben Spiegel

is warmth, a touch that wraps

the body inside the sphere 

of a confited stillness. It lets 

acquaintances out of sight

while makes clear of what is 

moved by the reflexes from what 

is moved by the will. Sleeping 

with it brings rest, whereas waking

up with it brings dread. Every task  

even stretching out the palm needs

choreography. How the muscles

resemble the heart jumping up

and down: guitar strings vibrating

performing a nocturne. Come into

a remote swimming pool, the guts

lay at the bottom; tips of the toes

try to step forward against the water

echoing foreign languages, these long 

finishes. If the mind happens to stay

intact, the present’ll dissolve into 

threads of spinning, malleable voices

of interests, desires, devotions,

of what’ve said and what’ve done.

It is mild, a secret that ponders

the self of what it has become.

John Cai

To sweet nothings and pretty dalliance,

Doting days of indulgent indolence,

And rooms with scintillating ambiance:

To old love and its steadfast loveliness.

Who else is as improvident as thee—

No other passion is as supercilious

And ardently haughty towards the others;

None has grand objects so superfluous,

Nor prances in stricken minds so gracefully,

Nor runs amok therein so freely,

As if more thyne than themselves’ are lovers.

Impudence discloses a rare wisdom,

And of this truth thee are the best teacher:

It is written by acts in thy kingdom

And proclaimed daily by a courtier

Who hath a sweet disorder in their dress

And that unwonted wild civility;

They bewitch without beguiling

With their mellifluous, uncouth address,

Which seems sans form or rationality,

But whose form is just that deficiency—

Is there a more desirable lacking?

To this thee owe thy most prized ascendance:

The way in which the fleet glow of thy light

Lends irrationality resplendence

And reveals an otherwise hidden delight.

For, what else could be wiser and more true

Than that which is known with our whole being

And is a fulguration to dark eyes

That ne’er look past the bound psychê’s purview

And suffer sensibility’s chaining.

We need thee to do our unfettering

And to add sweetness and weight to our sighs.

Josh Rubin

For Sylvia Plath

I don’t want your son’s baptism certificate I 

want five thousand more books.

Thirty—a crime with that mind you could

have written it all and I guess you did.

Inside a Christmas card Nick pencils Latin in

curly calligraphy you never saw. Why should I

know Frieda improved in arithmetic spring of ‘68

while you lie somewhere still? Her teacher has

written “D.P. Delay” on her report card, which I read 

as Dead Parent. Doomed Person. Dread-Prone.

Twelve purple candles dot Nick’s crayola tree and I wonder

why this makes me angry. Why the picture in his

miniscule frame mocks me. I have to shut the

manila—it blinds me with inadequacy.

Nick addresses everything “To Daddy and Carol”—maybe

I shouldn’t tell you this. Frieda’s handwriting 

resembles yours. She scribbles poems 

everywhere, writes about death and trees and 

secret gardens on the back of a tea-stained 

pink parchment typescript. You might like to know 

that Nick can do well in French when he concentrates, 

but plays too much and is often guilty of 

turning in stories before checking the spelling. 

He is “very appreciative” of poetry, 

of course. In a red notebook he writes stories 

called “Our Attack on the Spanish” and “Richard V,” 

the latter earning a “This is very good. 

Did you copy some of it?”

In one folder a honey, twine-tied curl 

safe in a small black box. I have touched 

your daughter’s hair.

I have to stop when I reach 

another sleeve of artwork because no one could ever color 

the world like you, even your own. In this bright room

I picture my nightstand where you wait, unblinking,

studying my ceiling. 

Raegan Allen

When I don’t eat my mother wants to give it a name. 

She wants to write me down like 

an old recipe card.

Not to be placed in the wooden box in the pantry,

but displayed at holiday dinners 

like the one with my dead grandmother’s 

scribbled instructions for Georgia peach pie. 

Start by peeling and slicing

Drain peaches, reserving juices

Bring to a boil, wait seventeen years

It’s the last thing I have of her,

my mother will say,

and stroke the card like 

my jagged, jutting ribs.

Raegan Allen