You’ve Got to be Vigilant, Wes

Apr 8, 2026

“Nonchaloir,” oil on canvas, by John Singer Sargent, 1911.

I think about killing people all the time.

When I’m waiting for a subway, I think about pushing other passengers onto the tracks. I stand with my back against the wall until the train pulls in and distract myself by watching people’s feet.

When I’m on a balcony I think I’m going to throw someone off. I actually imagine exactly how to do it. I picture getting them to lean over a bit first, maybe point out a cat on a lower roof, or a woman throwing a vase at her daughter.

If I’m cutting a lime, I hold onto the knife tightly to make sure I don’t accidentally stab my boyfriend through the heart.

Steve, the boyfriend, signed me up for a First Aid class at the Y. He thinks it might turn things around a little, make me think about saving people instead of killing them. I’m touched by his thoughtfulness, so I go, even though I know it’s not going to change things. I’ve been like this since I was a kid.

The first hour is CPR. I don’t know anyone in the class, so I pair up with the only other woman, figuring I could take her if things turn bad. I can’t go into a room without categorizing everyone within the first few seconds: Those I Could Take and Those Who Could Take Me. It’s usually pretty clear.

Clara, my CPR partner, asks me to go first, so I kneel down next to the dummy and go through the script we just learned:

“I’m trained in First Aid, are you okay?” And then, “CALL 9-1-1!”

I place the heel of my right hand on the rubber pad, place my left hand on top, lock my elbows, and start pushing to the tune of Staying Alive. The instructor yells at all of us to push harder, that it’s impossible to push too hard. I doubt that, and start thinking about how I am certainly strong enough to break through a sternum, especially if I was all pumped up on adrenaline.

Clara is crying. I mean, really crying. She’s not loud about it. In fact, she seems kind of embarrassed and tries to pretend she isn’t. I stop saving the dummy and stare at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She takes a gulp of air. “He’s going to die.”

“He’s not real,” I say, still trying to keep him alive.

“In my last class, they said 92% of people who have a heart attack on the street die, even with CPR.”

Four times. That’s how many times Clara has taken this First Aid class. Turns out, she’s a mess, my CPR partner. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her. She’s sporty, put together, looks like a model out of a Patagonia catalog.

Our instructor is helping some big guy (Could Take Me) across the room get his rhythm right, so I stop saving the dummy and sit back against the wall. Clara gets on her knees and moves over to take her turn.

“What’s the point?” I ask. “Why keep taking the same class over and over if you don’t think it will matter?”

She’s crying still as she gets her hands in the right position and leans her weight on the dummy’s chest. There’s no way she could push too hard. Her nose drips onto the blue plastic chest.

“Because you never know,” she says, starting the rhythm, and I realize maybe we aren’t all that different.

*

Later, I stand behind a cop in line at the bagel store. I usually don’t let myself get this close to cops because I’m one unintentional impulse away from killing someone at all times anyway, so why add guns and nightsticks to the mix. But I’m starving, haven’t eaten since well before the First Aid class, and I get cranky when I don’t eat for this long.

I could lean to the left, say something to the cop quietly so he has to lean in, then grab the gun off of his right thigh. There’s a safety clip, but I would be quick. Or the nightstick, strapped to his left hip, held in by just a snap. Wouldn’t take much distraction to have that out.

“I just took a First Aid class,” I say out loud, which is something I do sometimes to make sure I don’t do anything stupid. If people are watching me, I figure I’m less likely to do something. My last therapist suggested this strategy, which I haven’t given up on yet.

The cop turns to look at me. He sizes up my arms, checks out my chest.

“Why?” he asks, which I think is a strange response. I mean, why not take a First Aid class?

“I’m going to Haiti on a service trip,” I say, even though those are two things I would never do, go to Haiti, or do a service trip. The guy behind me in line says, “Building a school?” A quick glance back tells me I Could Take Him, particularly with a nightstick.

I don’t love lying, but now I have to keep going, and I’m already out of things that I know about Haiti, or service for that matter.

“No,” I say, and then, “Corneal transplants,” because I had read an article while I was waiting for the First Aid class to start about this doctor who goes to Haiti every year to save people’s sight.

“Are you a doctor?” the cop asks.

I just want to order a bagel without killing anyone.

“Yup,” I say, because who the fuck else could do corneal transplants.

“Then why’d you take a First Aid class?” says the guy behind me. I look at the cop and shake my head knowingly, like we’re in this together, the two of us against all the dumbasses in the universe. He puts his hand over his holster and orders his bagel.

*

I tell Steve about Clara that evening while we’re having a drink on the balcony. Steve has his feet up on the railing, and I am as far back from the edge as I can be and still be outside. I try to explain how desperate she was, how pathetic. But in retelling the class I start to worry about her, start to think that maybe she just needs a friend.

“Did you think about killing her?” Steve asks.

He really wants to understand me, which I think is a bad idea.

I decide to take the First Aid class again, this time at the community center by the theater. I really think things have been better since I went, though I’m not entirely sure because I thought about pushing a child down the stairs in my apartment building last night. The difference this time, though, is that I also thought about making a splint for her arm from my belt and the takeout chopsticks.

I breeze through the CPR portion of the class, partnered this time with Mark, an electrician (Could Take Me). After my turn, he takes the instructor’s direction that we can’t push too hard as a dare, and before he can save the dummy, he’s popped the bag in the plastic chest.

“You killed him,” I say, a little surprised by how quickly it happened.

“No shit,” he says. He tells me he’s taking the class because his partner died in an electrical accident, and even though he wasn’t with him, he could have been, and then maybe he could have saved him. The guy was sixty-two years old and on Christmas Eve he got paged for an emergency call in Westchester, some rich couple’s new dryer kept blowing a fuse, and he went alone, even though he could have said no, it’s just a dryer, and even though it was Christmas Eve (or maybe because it was Christmas Eve?), and he showed up and screwed up and rewired things wrong and BAM. Dead.

“I should’ve been there,” he says. “I could’ve saved him.”

“You can’t save everyone,” I say. I mean it to sound comforting, but I think it just comes across as cold.

Ten minutes later, I watch Mark through the electrocution part of the required video. I want to hold his hand, which I think is real growth.

When I get home, I tell Steve what to do if I ever get a projectile stuck in my eyeball. You’re not supposed to pull it out, which is counter-intuitive, so I thought he should know in case it happened, because chances are he would just yank it out. He’s kind of a fixer. I tell him you’re supposed to take a Dixie cup and poke a hole in it and place it over the projectile and then tape it to the person’s head until you get to the hospital.

“Got it,” he says, and then, “Your sister called. You should call her back.” He is close with his family.

I think about taking the pen off the kitchen island and jamming it into his neck.

I think Steve’s idea may have backfired a bit. Knowing 50 ways to save someone also means knowing 50 ways someone could die. Yesterday I had to leave the hardware store early because I pictured shoving “Hello! My name is Wes!” into the wall-cutter. I was having some 2 x 4s cut into blocks for a furniture project I wanted as a surprise for Steve, and there’s this wall-size saw that only the employees can use. They have to put in a code (3697#—written in pen on his hand) and then they cut the pieces you want. There’s a roped off area around the saw, but who are they kidding? It’s a rope. In less than two seconds I could be under and shoving Wes’s hand right into the blade.

People don’t make sense, Wes. You’ve got to be vigilant.

In the case of amputation you have to stop the bleeding immediately with a tourniquet, and then you have only minutes to get the amputated part on ice before it becomes useless. You’re supposed to put it in a baggie and then write the exact time on the baggie with a Sharpie. I bought a box of Sharpies this morning.

I run into Clara at the grocery store. I am inexplicably glad to see her, and I tell her this. I think she is surprised by my enthusiastic hello. She looks like she may start to cry again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, clutching her cart.

“It’s okay,” I say, smiling. I appreciate people who apologize for no reason.

A man with a baseball hat turns into the aisle and I reach towards the paper towels so I won’t think about slamming my cart into him. I know that if I did, there’s no chance of Clara being able to resuscitate him. Once he passes, I move over to the Dixie Cup section and pick out a box with bees on it. I hand one to Clara, which she adds to her cart.

“For projectiles,” I say.

“Or juice,” she says, which I think is funny.

*

“Who’s Clara again?” asks Steve, which makes me picture grabbing him by his hair and submerging his head in the pasta pot.

“My new friend,” I say, starting to feel a little bit proud about not killing him. I add aloe to the grocery list.

Clara and I meet for coffee a few days later because I think I’m going to make a go at this friend thing even though I have not always been so successful in that area. I had gone back to the Y by the waterfront and waited around until the First Aid instructor showed up. I told him I needed to get in touch with a woman from our class, that she had lost her engagement ring and I had found it, and I went on to say how she had given me her number but I lost it, and that I understood it was probably confidential and all. I could have saved all those lies. He didn’t give a shit about confidentiality.

Clara wasn’t surprised I called. It was like she was expecting it, like virtual strangers called her all the time wanting to be friends. I started in on some sort of excuse, but she just cut me off and asked if I wanted to get coffee.

“I don’t really know anyone in the city yet,” she said.

“This is nice,” I say when we sit down the next day at the coffee shop. I’m nervous I’m going to say something stupid so I drink my coffee, which is too hot, and I burn my tongue.

“Fuck,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. We’re going to be good for each other.

I think I need to break up with Steve. Or marry him. I can’t decide which, so I buy a bottle of tequila and decide to have a few shots before he gets home and let what happens happen without overthinking it. There are too many decisions to make in the world, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll make the wrong one each time. I had to make at least 10 that I can think of on my walk back from coffee. Eleven, if you count what kind of tequila to buy. Twelve, if you count deciding which credit card to use. Thirteen if deciding not to grab the bottle by the neck and swing it into the 19-year-old cashier’s head counts.

I hear a key in the door, straighten my back so my boobs lift a few inches, and move the tequila bottle so it’s not within immediate reach.

But it’s not Steve who opens the door. It’s my sister, who has a key because she owns the place and never forgets to remind me that I’m 27, underemployed, and underachieving. Her overactive guilt keeps me housed, so I accept the attitude.

“Hi,” she says, and then looks at the bottle on the table. “Really? It’s not even five o’clock.”

“You could have knocked,” I say, not getting up. This is how we are with each other.

Turns out my mother is off her meds. My sister shares what she knows, which isn’t much, just what the neighbors told her.

“It’s your turn,” she says, “I can’t take off work again.” She has an important job.

“You could have just called,” I say.

“Right,” she says.

I invite her to stay, but we both know I don’t mean it and she says she has to go back to work.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she says at the door, and I don’t know whether she means the mom thing or the us thing. “It’s just a matter of time before someone gets really hurt.”

She’s gone before I can tell her she’s a little fucking late with that concern.

I don’t break up with Steve or propose when he arrives. I tell him about my sister dropping by and that I need to go to my mom’s in the morning, and he hugs me in a way that worries me. Even though there are dozens of sharp or heavy objects within reach, I don’t imagine killing him.

Clara comes with me to my mother’s. We were supposed to meet for lunch, the next logical step in our young friendship, and when I called to cancel, she offered to come along instead.

“I’m good with mothers,” she said, as if they were a particular breed of dog. Even though it’s a terrible idea for at least a dozen reasons, I agree to bring her along.

Steve offered to come too, but I told him no, which led to our first real fight. He said something about how I never let my guard down even for one goddamn minute and I said something about how he never stands up for himself and he said something about me being too controlling to let him stand up for himself and I said something about him letting me be controlling because he can’t handle control and then we both just drank tequila until we forgot why we were fighting. The truth is I become fourteen again when I am home, which was not my best age. Not sure 27 is a whole lot better, but if there is any chance Steve and I are going to make it as a couple, which I’m starting to doubt, there are things he shouldn’t see.

On the ninety minute drive upstate, I tell Clara just enough to make her helpful, but not enough to make her pity me. I tell her my mother is mentally ill, has been since I can remember, that my father was gone by the time I was five, that my sister, six years older, was the responsible one for awhile, but then had enough and left us alone, that it was all good, really, in the grand scheme of global trauma.

“She’s fine when she’s on her meds,” I say, as we get closer, and then, because I’m worried I may have sugar-coated the situation, “It may not be pretty,” I say. “She can be mean.”

“I’m sorry,” Clara says, putting her hand on my arm.

“Is what it is,” I say.

When Clara and I get to the house, my mother is in the kitchen. She has painted the walls with paprika—actual paprika, not the color—and nailed lemon slices to the doorway. It must have been hard work, because she is sitting at the island, sweating through her tee shirt, which says Save the Manatees. She is wearing pink sweatpants and no shoes. There is broken glass all over the floor, and I notice that all the frames with the school photos that lined the back wall are missing their glass.

It’s best not to challenge her when she’s this way, you never know what will set her off, so I step carefully through the mess to get a broom.

“Hi Mom,” I say like a fourteen year old.

“Fuck you,” she says like my mother.

“Get me a drink,” she says, and then notices Clara, who is standing with her back against the wall and her hands clutched in front of her as if praying. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

“Who the fuck are you?” My mother says, and then turns back to me. “I said, get me a fucking drink.” It’s ten o’clock in the morning. I can hear my sister’s voice in my head, but I shut it down and get the gin out. Maybe I can get her to take her pills with the cocktail. The goal is either to get her back on her meds or to get her committed, which means things will have to get pretty bad here. Last time I tricked her into taking the pills, so I have hope, which is perhaps the most destructive of my coping mechanisms.

Clara takes a deep breath and carefully pulls a stool up next to my mother. She is making strange little cooing noises, which I’m not sure she is aware she’s doing. She starts rubbing my mother’s back. My mother has never been one who likes to be touched and she makes that clear with something close to a growl. But Clara soldiers on and my mother gives up and goes back to yelling at me, which I am good at ignoring.

I find a lime in the back of the refrigerator drawer. It’s a bit hard, but I’m pretty sure she is not going to notice. I grab the first knife I see in the drawer, a big one, and am too distracted by Clara, who is now hugging my mother, to imagine killing anyone with it.

And then I cut the tip of my finger off.

It takes me a second to realize it. The wedge of lime is halfway to the glass before I notice the blood, and it turns out that despite my overactive imagination, I can’t handle the sight of my own blood.

I wake up on the floor. Clara is leaning over me.

“I’m trained in First Aid!” she yells. “Call 911!” she yells. My mother is standing behind her, hopping up and down like a toddler.

I look at Clara and then at my hand. There’s a ridiculous amount of blood. I try to say something about getting a Sharpie, but I’m pretty sure it just sounds like a scream.

“Give me your belt!” Clara yells to my mother, who is not wearing a belt. “We need to stop the bleeding!”

“Fuck you!” my mother yells back, and I think she is laughing, or maybe crying, always hard to tell. I notice that her bare feet are covered in blood and I wonder if it’s mine or hers or if it even matters.

I remember something from our class about remaining calm, about applying steady pressure, but all I can get out is a barely audible apology.

The EMTs are kind and efficient. Clara apparently pulled it together and wrapped her fleece vest around my hand to stop the bleeding until they arrived, and they praise her as she hands them the gin and tonic glass with the tip of my finger on ice. I see them look around at the kitchen. I’m sure it will be hard to retell this one back at the station. One of them tells Clara on our way out that she may have saved my life, which is bullshit, but it strikes me as a kind thing to say.

My mother and I ride in the ambulance together. She is strapped to the gurney, her feet wrapped in white bandages, and I am belted in upright. The EMT in the back with us offers to call someone, but I tell him not to, that we’re fine, that I could really drive myself, that this is really no big deal and everyone is overreacting and that I can take care of it all.

“The fuck she can,” says my mother, and I can tell from her tone that things are about to get pretty bad.

My hand throbs, wrapped tight in bandages and tape.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, maybe out loud. It doesn’t matter.

I’m released a few hours later. My mother is not. We’ll have at least 72 hours to figure out a plan or try to get her committed again. When Steve picks me up, I tell him we’ll talk about it tomorrow, and he just squeezes my good hand.

While on painkillers, I don’t think of killing anyone. I even try to imagine it, just to test myself, but the water glass next to me is just a water glass and the balcony is just a nice place to sit with my feet up and watch the rain. It should feel good, this absence of violent thoughts, but I just feel vulnerable. Empty.

Clara comes over to help take care of me. She is different. Confident. She spills my water and doesn’t apologize. Steve laughs at something she says as if he’s sixteen. It’s all a bit too much, honestly, how easy they are. I think once I can feed myself and zip up my jeans by myself and open a bottle of wine by myself, I’m going to break up with both of them.

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, Best Short Fictions, and Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies, and has appeared in journals such as Vestal Review, JAKE, Flash Frog, and SmokeLong Quarterly. You can read her work at https://www.emilyrinkema.com/ or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema).

The Cartographers

Mar 26, 2026

Map of New England, New York, and Virginia, by Arnoldus Montanus, 1671.

Publicly, we sold memories under Quimbly, Barrett & Woods, but when it was just the three of us, working late into the night, we thought of ourselves as mapmakers. There was something nautical about the loft we’d rented: the massive oak beams and triangular plate glass window that stood like a sail at the end of the room. In the day it showed us the tar-papered roofs of neighboring apartment buildings, and at night it revealed the illuminated Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan’s skyline. We called it The Crow’s Nest, and we were the captains, lording over the memories of the world as we drew our maps into our programs. Here was the ocean, here the ships, here the hotel, here the path that led to town, here the street vendors, here the memories of children we never had and parents much better than the ones we did. And far out there was the edge of the world.

What happens when you get to the edge?

You fall off, we joked.

Early on there were many edges. They existed within our restaurants and hotels as well as the borders of our cities. Most of our hotel rooms were well-charted—open the drawer and you’d find a Bible, take the paintings down and there’d be more wall—but behind the closed doors of neighboring rooms there was nothing but white light. There are, of course, the Japanese maximalists, like the legendary Shimazaki, who design every carpet fiber of every hotel room to avoid any edges, but what Quimbly, Barrett, and I found was that most people trusted memories like they trusted films. You beam a movie between your eyes and remember the plot in vivid detail; you don’t wonder where a sidekick’s parents live. When you beam a vacation, you remember swimming at the beach and caipirinhas in coconut shells, not the unexplored outskirts of town. Granted, if a tourist tried to remember swimming far enough, say past the ships, had they gone further than the edge of town, up a highway, stepped onto the dirt roads at the edge of the map, they’d see that place where the ground ended and the white light began, but people were happy with their memories. What they wanted was a family trip that went well. They wanted the feeling of skydiving to tingle their bones. They don’t care about the rivets and bolts of the plane they jump from; they merely want to remember that the pilot’s name was Chip, that he patted them on the back, that he said nice jump.

What the populace wanted, what they still want, what they’ll always want, is pulp cybernetics. Perhaps not as cheap as the corner-store memories China’s producing—$8.99 porn thrills, so poorly constructed you can see the patches of light where the hardware burns through the girls’ skin—but give them palm trees, a restaurant with an attractive server, coral reefs and sand dollars for the kids, and you have a package that retails for $79.99.

*

It was shortly after Circuitry did the article on us that Quimbly began experimenting with bad memories. It was a natural progression for him. He specialized in emotional recollections: childhoods, marriages, and adolescence. He’d always cringed from anything Hallmarky—the happy marriages and quintessential childhoods—puppies and kittens as he called them. His first generation of memories all contained some element of sadness within them: grandchildren for the childless elderly, losses of virginity to lonely men who’d never known love. But there was something truly sinister to Quimbly’s second batch. He sold heroin addictions to artists wanting darker aesthetics, affairs to couples who’d never cheated on one another, gunfights to rappers, and suicide attempts to Goth kids.

It was to get away from the dark energies Quimbly was manufacturing that I ended up meeting Cynthia. She was sitting in the coffee shop across from the office where I’d go to get my coffee, clear my head, and work on constructing my own happier memories. There was no computer or phone in front of her, only an open journal which she leaned over in concentration. I was fascinated. I hadn’t seen anyone using a pen since college, and even then it was mostly older professors who’d used them. She was in her thirties, with long brown hair and flushed cheeks, and every now and again she rested the pen against her bottom lip as she tapped her sandaled foot against the table. If her pen hadn’t run dry, she probably never would have seen me.

“Hey,” she said.

“Me?” I asked stupidly; there was no one else around.

“Yeah, you. Do you have a pen?” She held hers in the air. “This one’s done for.”

“Sorry,” I said, and looked back at my laptop, wishing I wasn’t such an idiot around women. Say something, I told myself, and so I looked back up and said “Hey.” She raised her eyes. “I’ll go ask if the barista has one.”

It turned out he didn’t. I walked back to her table. “Sorry,” I said, “no luck.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” She closed her journal.

“What are you writing?”

“Memories,” she said and pointed her pen at my laptop. “What about you?”

“Pretty much the same. It’s my work; I make memories. Maybe you’ve heard of us? Quimbly, Barrett & Woods?” She shook her head. “We’re in a lot of blogs right now.”

“I don’t read blogs,” she said. “I try to stay disconnected.”

“You’ve heard of beamed memories though, right?” She shook her head again. “Well, I’m Adam,” I said and extended my hand.

“Cynthia,” she said.

“I could show you what I do, if you’d like. Our workshop’s just across the street. I’m sure there’s a pen there.”

She put her journal in her bag. “Sure,” she said. “Show me your memories.”

*

Cynthia kept me out of the office that weekend. It’d been a long time since I’d been with anyone, and never with someone like Cynthia. When we lay in bed together, I could feel the loneliness of my previous life, filled with computer programming and take-out containers, giving way to the happiness of a future together. In short, I was falling in love.

I called in sick Monday and stayed in bed with her, afraid that if I left she’d disappear. It was the first time in months that I didn’t work on constructing memories. Instead, I let my mind fill with details of her: what her lips felt like, the timbre of her voice when she said my name, the way morning spread across the bedroom, how I’d forgotten what happiness felt like.

When I finally returned to work on Tuesday and told the guys, I got ribbed by Quimbly. “So that’s what happens when you get laid?” I shrugged and blushed. “Thought you’d both left me,” he said. “Barrett’s lost in the Bible.”

Barrett was sitting by his computer with his head down, the golden-rimmed pages of a King James on his desk. He’d found his niche with religious experiences. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Shhh…” he said darkly and didn’t look up.

“He’s writing Sunday sermons now,” Quimbly said. “Turns out folks are just as happy thinking they’ve been to church than actually going. Barrett, put that fucking Bible down, we’ve got something serious to talk about.” Barrett raised a bloodshot glare from the book before marking the page and rising.

We’d gotten our first complaint. A tech-savvy grad student had intentionally gone seeking the edge. He’d tried to remember driving to the border of the Mexican town we’d created for Spring Break and had run into the white light. His blog posts were already circulating the Internet.

“We haven’t been designing tight enough memories,” Quimbly said.

“The kid went searching,” I said defensively; it’d been my memory. “We can’t control where our users go.”

“Maybe not, but we can test each other’s memories,” Quimbly said. “From now on, before we release anything for sale, you go into Barrett’s memories, he goes into yours, and both of you go into mine. You test out the edges. Search every alleyway, open every door, drive as far as you can. You find the edge of a memory, you fix it. Go ahead and test at home if you want, just make sure you log every beam.”

“And what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m the control group,” Quimbly said. He promised to watch over us and hold our memories straight. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll keep your brains from getting fried.”

*

The problem with testing memories was that after enough blasts it became impossible to recognize the difference between authentic memories and beamed ones. Had I really fought in Afghanistan? Cynthia was lying next to me in bed, reading a book. It was one of her things—she read actual books. Where she found them, I have no idea. But there she’d be, pillows propped behind her head, reading a novel word by word, page after page, taking endless hours when she could’ve had the thing memorized in minutes.

“Was I ever in Afghanistan?” I asked.

“You weren’t born yet,” she said dryly.

“How about Bermuda?”

She lowered her book onto her knees and shook her head. “The last place you actually went to was your parents’ house for Thanksgiving.” It was February. I tried to remember back to November, the dinner with my parents; but it seemed less real than my memories of the tropics.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She raised her book. “Yeah, I’m positive. You’ve got to stop beaming.”

Cynthia was vegan and almost entirely anti-tech. She was devoted to causes like buying back land for Native Americans and safeguarding water rights for third world countries. Though I supported her causes, I resented that she never praised my work. “You know that indigenous tribes are buying our memories, right?”

She let out a heavy sigh. “I’m not trying to put down your work,” she said. “But you’re spending more time trying to figure out memories you never had than making real memories with me. You’re getting addicted.”

This wasn’t entirely true. In those first months together, I’d go to the Crow’s Nest and work on memories during the day, then take nights off with her. A bistro had opened near my place, and we’d go there on the weekends for breakfast. Nights we’d order in Chinese, lie in bed, and make love. But Cynthia was right. There were many times when she’d catch me staring out the window, trying to find the edge of Quimbly’s latest memory.

At work, Quimbly, Barrett, and I focused on making our memories last longer. The key was to package memories together. A vacation to Europe couldn’t simply be the Eifel Tower and the Louvre, it needed to involve the airplane ride, the week at work before, the mundane details which helped make the memories stick.

“All good memories have boredom buried in them,” Quimbly told us one night.

“You should write children’s books,” I said.

Barrett was unusually quiet. He’d grown more silent ever since he’d begun designing past-life memories, and we mistook his silence for Zen satori rather than the madness that was slowly taking his mind.

“Look, if we make perfect memories we’re not going to have customers left,” Quimbly said and leaned over the coffee table. “The key to our success is to give people ninety-nine percent perfect experiences. Make them almost happy and they’ll keep buying. Trust me on this.” Then he gave us the next batch of memories to test.

*

Cynthia hated Quimbly from the first time they met. I’d invited Quimbly for dinner in hopes they’d get along, but by the time we sat down to eat, it was a mess. Cynthia was working on a clean water project for African children and, in typical Quimbly fashion, he started an argument. “Look, I get you, it’s good to give them water, but let’s be honest, water isn’t going to change their history. Give them memory sticks and at least they’ll have happy memories before they die.”

“That’s really sick,” Cynthia said.

“You’re telling me if you could give them a happy childhood, you’d deny them?”

“It’s not a happy childhood; it’s forgetting their actual past.”

“I think you want them to suffer,” Quimbly said. “Somehow their pain makes things real for you.”

I tried to sooth the tension, suggested we do both, send them water and memories. Getting the kids water made sense, I said, it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t see any harm in giving kids good memories as well.

“Fuck that,” Cynthia said. “What you’re talking about is making a bunch of beam-heads who won’t ever work for social change.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “We’re designing parents for inner city kids with horrible upbringings; we’ve donated memories to the poor.”

“That’s not social change,” Cynthia said, and got up from the table, leaving her dinner unfinished. “I hope you know the work you guys are doing is evil.”

Quimbly took a sip of wine and gave me a smile after she left the room. “You sure she’s the one?” he asked. “You might want to take a closer look there, buddy.” He stayed long enough to finish his dinner and fix himself another drink, and then, when I said it was probably best I see him tomorrow, he left. I cleared the dishes from the table and went into the bedroom, where Cynthia sat reading.

“I can’t believe you work with that asshole.”

“You guys didn’t get off to the best start,” I admitted. “He’s actually a good guy; he just likes to push people’s buttons. He’s a brilliant designer.”

“That kind of brilliance I can do without.” She looked at me for the first time since I’d entered the room. “His fetish is getting inside people’s heads. That’s why he likes being, what did you call it, the control group? Control freak is more like it. He loves that he controls your memories—you’re his guinea pigs.”

In retrospect, I can see that this was precisely what Quimbly was doing. I’d thought of him as a friend—and maybe Barrett and I were as close to friends as Quimbly would ever be capable of—but, deep down, we were just social experiments to him. I couldn’t see it then however, and was angry at Cynthia for calling our work evil and me a guinea pig.

“It’s no different than what you do,” I said before I could stop myself. “You only want real memories, memories you get to hold onto and no one else. You talk about our future and all the memories we’ll have. You plan for a farmhouse that doesn’t exist.” I sounded exactly like Quimbly. “You like controlling my memories as much as he does.”

She looked at me for a moment before turning back to her book. “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s why I have a company worth millions, and you’re just reading a book.”

“Here,” she said, tossing me a pillow. “How about we sleep apart tonight.”

And so I went back into the living room and lay on the couch, late into the night, wondering why I’d defended Quimbly against the woman who loved me. Perhaps this proved everything Cynthia was trying to tell me—that he’d already gotten so deeply into my head that I’d willingly hurt anyone who reminded me, not out of control but out of love, that I’d never been to Russia or had a brother. It was this thought that brought me back to the bedroom, to climb beneath the sheets, and to hold her, telling her I was sorry, and that I wanted to make memories together.

*

It was hard to shake the memory of our first real fight. In the months that followed, Cynthia and I avoided that night with Quimbly, and I made an effort to be more present. We went for walks, ate at our favorite bistro, and we’d return to my apartment and make love. But there was a growing distance between us, and when she’d fall asleep, I’d edge my way out of bed to beam memories in the darkness of the bathroom. It was, I realize now, a time when I had everything: a woman who loved me, a company worth millions, and bidders waiting in line to buy us out. Quimbly was calling us the history-makers. It was a time when I believed we would become the masters of the world. Then we destroyed it all.

“We’ll make a fortune,” Quimbly said, putting his palms together.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” I asked.

“Simple ad placement. We layer one into your Cuba memory. Show sweat beading along a glass of Coke, carbonation fizzing. We’re talking big money for a single placement.”

Barrett was deadly silent. Over the past weeks he’d become increasingly taciturn, but this was something different. His lips were working back and forth against each other as though he was grinding his teeth.

“We’re selling out?” I asked.

“Just being practical. They’re lining up at our door. We could own the world.”

“Enough!” Barrett ordered, his voice echoing in the beams.

“Hold on,” Quimbly said, “You haven’t heard me out.”

“You dare argue with me?” Barrett boomed, his fingers clenching. “Do you know who I am? I am the Lord of lords and the King of kings; I am the alpha and omega. I am the Lord Supreme.” He rose from his seat, stepping onto the couch and lifting his hands into the air as though holding a staff. “You, who sew discontent, shall be crucified! Your hands and feet shall be cut off—”

“Barrett, chill,” Quimbly said.

“In my presence the mountains quake! The hills melt, the earth trembles, its people are destroyed! The day of judgment has come!” Then Barrett jumped from the couch and seized Quimbly around the neck so hard it left bruises for weeks after. It was when I saw Quimbly’s face turning blue that I took my beer bottle and broke it over Barrett’s head. We tied his legs and arms together and called 911.

That was the end of Barrett. He was sent upstate, where he ranted at the walls and played God to anyone willing to listen. When we cleaned out his apartment, we discovered the memories he’d never told us about. He’d begun a personal log which detailed beaming thousands of his own created memories; the notebook deteriorated into pages of an indecipherable alphabet.

Still, Barrett had tried, in his own way, to warn us. Come May, less than a week after our first memory ads launched, the word spread that we’d sold out. A blogger posted a scathing piece that went viral. Memory startups took the bait and began selling their memories as “100% ad free.”

“Who’d have guessed they’d resent having their brain space tweaked, they never seemed to mind before,” Quimbly joked. But he, too, was shaken. Within the month, sales fell and our inboxes were full of hate mail. We were no longer the masters of the universe, just owners of a failing company.

*

Quimbly ended up taking a job for another company that manufactured thought-ads. He told me the news as we cleared the Crow’s Nest of our belongings, and I listened vaguely as I cleaned out my desk, realizing the life we’d created together was now only a memory. Barrett was gone, Quimbly was moving on, and I had nothing but my dwindling savings and Cynthia.

“People resist thought ads, but soon enough they’ll be as commonplace as napkins,” he said. “I can get you in, but first clean yourself up.”

I looked up from the floorboards where I’d been staring, thinking about the years I’d spent in the war. “What do you mean clean myself up?”

“How many memories are you beaming a day?”

“Not that many,” I lied. Like Barrett, I was designing my own memories and downloading them when I couldn’t sleep. I still logged the memories I tested, but not my late night binges or the hundreds of high-end Shimazaki memories I’d spent my bank account on. “Maybe a few a day,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Look, I’m not telling you what to do with your life, but you’re starting to act like Barrett. Go visit him. Refresh your memory of what happens when you lose track.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” Quimbly said. “You probably don’t even remember the time we went skiing.”

“Of course, I do: Breckenridge; three days of fresh powder.”

Quimbly shook his head. “That was one of mine,” he said. “Listen, I know you won’t stop beaming because I tell you to, but if you’re going to keep beaming, at least use this one next.” Quimbly pulled a memory stick from his pocket. “It’s a going-away present.”

“Thanks,” I said, and though I knew he and Cynthia were right, and that the best thing for me would be never to touch another memory again, I couldn’t help myself from reaching out and taking the gift.

When I got back to the apartment, I left the boxes from the office in the hallway and sat down on the couch. I placed the tip of Quimbly’s memory stick against my forehead and pressed the button. I was halfway into the beam when Cynthia walked in.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said.

“What?” I opened my eyes.

“You just went bankrupt because of those things and you’re—” Then she stopped. “No, you know what—go ahead and enjoy yourself, beam all night if you want, I’m out of here.” She raised her two fingers into a peace sign then turned her back on me and left the room.

“Hey!” I said. “Just wait a minute, I’m almost done.” I finished Quimbly’s gift and got up to find her, but she wasn’t anywhere. Not in the bedroom, the kitchen, or the bathroom. The only trace of her was a note taped to the mirror. I’m done. Goodbye, Adam. Thanks for the memories. Sorry you liked yours better.

For the next two weeks I binged on memories to keep from letting the pain sink in. I went to the Himalayas and gambled in Vegas, I slept with porn stars and got wasted with celebrities, I drove in stretch limos through Hollywood and sat on the beaches of the world watching sunrise after tropical sunrise, beaming one after another memory, until one morning I found myself in the early light, dehydrated, shaking and sweaty, without a clue of who I was.

Did I have parents? Were they both still alive?

In one memory I recalled attending their funeral. In another I pictured them tanned and happy in L.A. And in yet another I remembered our childhood home in Tibet. I scrolled though my phone, my grip sweaty and slippery, until I found a number listed as Home.

A woman picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?” she said, her voice distant and unfamiliar.

“Mom?” I asked. “Can I come home?”

*

My life since leaving the memory business has mostly been recovery and learning to forgive Quimbly. I work to get my memories straight. I’ll recall my parents’ death, envision myself as an angry teenager, smoking cigarettes in the Rockies after their funeral. Then I’ll hear the floor squeak above me, hear my mother in the kitchen, listen to my father cough before he lets the door slam, and I’ll remember that I never lived in Colorado but grew up here in Brooklyn. I live in my parents’ basement again, like when I was a teenager, and I never smoked cigarettes, merely spent my daylight hours in this subterranean darkness programming computers.

I got a job at a coffee shop in the neighborhood where I help curate the art on the walls and brew lattes for the kids who are settling this outpost of New York City. And I work on my letter to Cynthia. I sit, pen in hand, trying to remember what love felt like. I miss you, I write. I’m better now. I want to make real memories together.

Quimbly saved me, there’s no doubt about that. Had I never fallen in love with Cynthia, she never could’ve left me; had she never left me, I never would’ve stopped beaming. Typical though, that even Quimbly’s acts of kindness were sadistic. It was when I’d finished my letter that I understood his real gift had been motivation, not merely memories. Sealing my pages into the envelope, I picked up my pen to write Cynthia’s address, and realized I had no clue where she lived. Every memory I had of her involved my apartment, the bistro, or walking the streets in winter. Hadn’t I ever seen her apartment, I wondered. And then, before I could stop myself, I understood that I’d found the edge. Light poured through the cracks where stories of her family should’ve been. It came streaming in from the hallway of my old apartment, which had never been clean, but was a dark, curtained cave, filled with take-out containers and an unmade bed. The bistro where we ate never had a name; the Chinese take-out never had fortune cookies. And yet, all the other details had been masterfully placed, every memory bunched together to form a life that had never happened. I sat there in the coffee shop, the light fluttering behind my eyelids, feeling my heart sail off the edge of the world.

Love scars memories, even if it was never real. When I walk the streets I think: we walked here together, she used to touch my arm like this, and the pain of white emptiness sets in. You can’t get rid of memories; you can only try to ignore them. I’ve been weeding through my old notebooks, finding the edge of the world in one after another memory. I was never in France or Tokyo, have never seen the California Redwoods or swam in the Caribbean, and I’ve never made love with Cynthia. All the same, I keep working on my letters to her. I tell her I can still remember her skin against mine as we slept, the light in her eyes when I’d open my apartment door for her, and the sound of her voice, telling me, over and over, just how much she loved me.

Alexander is the founder and Director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a best book of the year by NPR and Electric Literature. His fiction has appeared in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy and Best American Experimental Writing. His short story, “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” was adapted as the film “After Yang” by A24 Films, and was the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance, the Boston Society of Film Critics Award, and Barack Obama’s Best Films of 2022.

The Broke Side of Austin

Jun 9, 2025

Day after New Year’s, I buried my husband Curtis, who should have died of shame but pancreatic cancer got him first. I was sixty-two and everyone I ever loved was dead. Any day, the bank would take our home of thirty-three years, a modest ranch with a sweet garden in the back. End of February, I drove south from downtown Austin, past the city limits onto curbless streets edging parched lawns, my truck stirring up the dust of a drought winter. I pulled into Cedar Elm Lane, where its namesake tree lorded over the Sunny Acres sign on the corner. Some wiseacre had painted an “F” over the “S.” A hodgepodge of trailers, RVs and modular homes were plopped willy-nilly on the lots, with pickups, mommy vans and low riders parked in the dirt drives. The skeletons of live oaks, molted in winter, were staggered along the street.

I turned into the only empty lot, graced by a single twenty-foot Mexican buckeye that promised pink, sweet-smelling blooms come spring. That was alright by me. Javier, the trailer park manager, met me wearing a white straw cowboy hat and crisp linen shirt with a bolo tie. “Nice and shady,” he proclaimed, indicating the one tree. A beat-up single-wide sat next door to my left about twenty yards away. Somebody had graffitied shithead, fuckface, asswipe, etcetera, on its butt end. The occupants had painted a rainbow of swirls over the mess like a foul-mouthed kid’s finger painting. That gave me pause. The breeze shifted and the brimming dumpster at the far end of the street made itself known. That too.

I clasped my hand around the locket on my necklace. It held a baby photo of my son Jesse pressed over a lock of his hair. Beyond the backyard lay a field of dry grass peppered with early spring bluebonnets, his favorite wildflower. Curtis and I had taken Jesse out to the country every year until his last, so he could marvel at their deep pink throats and grapey scent.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“One problem, Miz Maggie. A friend of a resident put a hold on it.”

“Why’d you show it to me then?”

“They’re late on the deposit.”

I blurted, “I’ll pay six months rent up front.” The last of my money. Javier turned and stared at that lopsided trailer next door. I caught a whiff of dread.

Late March, I stood on the edge of the dry patch of clay that was to be my yard and watched Javier expertly back my new used Airstream onto the lot. The Texas sun fried the still air. A scorpion skittered under my trailer. Beyond the back lot, an ocean of bluebonnets waved their tall indigo heads and blew their sweet bubble gum perfume my way. I so wished Jesse were there.

Javier opened the door to my truck and swung his long legs onto the hardpack. The man never broke a sweat. “Alright Miz Maggie, d’you need help hooking up?”

“No thanks. I’ve been YouTubing Airstream how-tos all week.” I was not one to ask for help, even in the worst circumstance.

I retrieved my tools and eyed the shabby trailer with the crazy paint job next door. A faded Tacoma pickup, scratched and pockmarked, was parked out front. A half-built deck jutted out from the front door and on it, piles of slick auto parts were stacked up like cairns. I checked out one of the piles. Strips of leather, colored wire and rubber wove through the parts and bound them together. “What the heck are these?”

“Bennett Jones is one of our resident artistes,” Javier said. “He sells those sculptures here and there. Rich people buy them.”

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Said Bennett had carved out a sprawling firepit between our yards. “Isn’t that pit partly on my rental? Looks like the perfect spot to put my garden.”

“The previous residents shared the pit with the Joneses. People love coming here, gathering under the stars by the fire. Instant friends right by your front door.”

“It’s my yard. I’m putting a garden in.”

Javier pointed to the back end of my rental property next to a scrubby stand of mesquite.

“Why don’t you put it there?” he said. “By your storage shed.”

I walked over and scoped out the land. A soft breeze blew through the mesquite. It was convenient to the shed. But still.

I put in the tire chock blocks, dropped the hitch and hooked up the tank hoses. It was slow going in the fiery heat. Once the electrical was connected and the a/c turned on, I drove into Austin to get my kitty, Willie Nelson, who was keeping cool at my cousin’s. I brought Willie back to the Airstream to get used to the place. As I was carrying him to the trailer, my neighbor in the painted trailer peeked out the window.

After lunch, I sweated over setting up the poop tank hose. I would have killed for some ice tea. The modular to the right of me was empty, the occupants’ vehicles gone. I was screwing up my courage to ask the other neighbor for ice, when out he walked.

He wore a suede fringed vest over a vintage Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, turquoise cowboy boots, and an old Stetson with a tie-dyed scarf serving as hat band. His beard, which he’d braided to a point, covered half of a pudgy, middled-aged face. His hair hung down his back in a long swinging braid. He’d decked himself out in man jewelry: leather bracelets on one wrist, thick silver and turquoise bands on the other. Around his neck a bulky turquoise bear hung on a strip of leather, what we gals called a statement necklace. He looked like the mutant son of a Deadhead and a cowboy.

“Howdy neighbor,” he called across the tattered lawn. A heavy, brow-beaten, hippie woman with long dirty-blond hair followed five steps behind him carrying a paper plate of cupcakes. Her voluminous poncho, pieced together from fabric scraps, floated like a jelly fish over tie-dyed harem pants. “I’m Bennett,” he said, “and this is Sylvie.”

“Welcome to Sunny Acres,” she said, eyes on the ground. She handed me the red velvet cupcakes, a few days past their prime.

Bennett held up a baggie containing a couple of fat joints. “You partake?”

“Sure, thanks.” I reached for the baggie and he yanked it back.

“Ten bucks a joint. Best shit in Shitty Acres.”

“So much for Southern hospitality,” I said. “Never mind.”

“Oh honey, you can’t cough up a few bucks for weed? You got a fancy hipster trailer and brand spankin’ new truck to tow it. What’s that, an F-250?”

“It’s used. I bought it with my hard-earned money.” That truck and trailer were all I had to show for my life’s work and the meager leavings after I sold our furniture and Curtis’s old truck.

“Duly noted, your highness.”

“Thanks for dropping by, but I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Man, I just come over to say hi to my new neighbor. See if she’s some kind of rich bitch slumming with the trailer trash.” His woman winced at this, but dared not open her mouth.

“Well, while you’re being neighborly, how about moving your firepit over a few feet to your yard. Otherwise, I’ll be taking it up with management.”

“Be my guest,” Bennett said. “I’d like to hear what Javier has to say about that. And here we was going to invite you to a barbecue this weekend. I wonder how your little pussy cat will taste with my homemade sauce on it.”

“Leave my cat alone.” I shook my hammer at him.

He laughed. “Take it easy, woman. We’re just kidding around.”

“Bennett, please?” his wife said.

“C’mon, Sylvie. Welcome Wagon is not welcome.” She trudged home behind Bennett.

At her stoop, she glanced back at me with a sad, wistful look.

I felt dizzy and could barely breathe. I hustled inside my trailer for a glass of water. That Bennett was a real charmer. Now I was stuck for six months––all Curtis’s fault. He might as well have burned our money in a bonfire. All the plans we made for our retirement up in smoke. All the lies he told me. The nights he didn’t come home, when I was sure he was having an affair. He was––with a deck of cards and a bunch of crooks playing Texas Hold’em.

Curtis used to be all blue-eyed swagger and muscle, with the tongue of a poet. The kind of man who makes you want to rip your clothes off in broad daylight. He’d had a thick head of hair, but it thinned out and turned white almost overnight after Jesse died. He grew a beer belly and a host of digestive complaints. I kicked him out when I heard he’d bet his business and borrowed against our house. I took him back when he got his diagnosis. He died Christmas day and I’d cried myself to sleep every night since, holding onto Jesse’s stuffed kangaroo. I’d sewed Mr. Roo back together so many times he looked like the Frankenstein monster.

The murderous heat and day’s exertion had exhausted me, but I stayed up late unpacking and decorating, while Willie sniffed around and found some good hidey-holes. I set out the last of my books: Austen, Kingsolver, Morrison, and a mildewed family Bible, alongside Curtis’s collected Shakespeare and a ragged copy of Catch 22. I hung pictures and rescued Mr. Roo from a box. He still smelled of Jesse and faint hospital odor, but I would never let him go.

The place felt good to me, small and compact, like a silver cocoon, where I could fall apart and come together again. I didn’t need a big house full of grievous memories. All I needed was a trailer, a garden, and a cat. Maybe a friend or two. I was done with love.

The next morning, I woke in a sweat, disoriented from a bad dream. I opened my eyes to see my cat bouncing on top of me in the cool womb of the Airstream. I got up to run a glass of water, but barely a drip came out of the faucet. I put Willie back in his carrier, pulled on a robe and went outside. The hose to the city water was disconnected. The left front tire of my truck lay flat to the ground. It was April Fool’s Day. Me and Bennett Jones were officially at war.

I headed to Javier’s office, housed in a small modular, determined to get on the waitlist for the next available lot. A line of people waited at the door to pay rent, including a neighbor from across the street who’d been spying on me from the porch of a nice old manufactured home. She looked about a hundred, but she wore tight capris on a Dolly Parton body and an old-school, bleached-blond Texas hair wig. She held an unlit cigarette in one hand and dragged an oxygen tank behind her.

“You’re the new gal squeezed up in that shiny tin can,” she said in a husky rasp.

“It’s very roomy actually––”

“You picked a fight with the wrong man, city girl.”

The other tenants glared at me. I was too stunned to answer.

Javier opened the door, wearing his bolo tie and a sport jacket over jeans. “Luke, your go,” he said to a man in painter’s overalls, first in line. I stood outside the door as Luke stepped in, waved his rent check and dropped it on Javier’s massive wooden desk. A rainbow-colored donkey piñata hung in the opposite corner. Javier handed Luke a plastic bat. The bleach blond lifted up her oxygen tank and pushed in. Javier held out his arm, “Miz Thorn, wait your turn.”

“Hit it!” Miz Thorn commanded Luke, who took a big swing and cracked the piñata. An eruption of candy spilled out and a green object arced toward me––I caught it right-handed. A lime.

“Good catch,” Javier said. Luke scooped up a handful of candy, saluted Javier and left.

“The Kisses are mine!” Miz Thorn announced, gathering up the little foil mountains.

“Rent, Miz Thorn!” Javier said. “And you better not be smoking next to that oxygen.”

She dropped a balled-up check on the desk. “It ain’t lit. I’m no fool.” She brushed past me and tsked. As she reached the end of the line, I heard her say, “Lock your doors. The Democrats are moving in.”

After the rent parade left with their candy hauls, I sat opposite Javier and surveyed his office. He’d loaded a bookshelf next to a dented file cabinet with an army of prickly succulents and hung some trippy Mexican folk art on the wall. He had a thing for armadillos.

“Heard you got off on the wrong foot with the Joneses,” he said. Hell, Bennett had gotten to him too. I filled him in on the flat tire and sabotage to my trailer.

He poured me a cup of coffee and set it in front of me with a carton of half and half.

“Now, young lady, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” He swung his booted feet up on the desk. “We do things different in Sunny Acres––we all pull for each other.” He leaned back. “Miz Maggie, why don’t you try making up with Bennett. He appreciates a good Austin craft beer. Get him a six of Zilker Marco. Y’all will be best friends right away.” He leaned toward me. “You caught the Lucky Lime. You’ve earned a second chance.”

“I am not buying that bastard any overpriced Millennial microbrew.”

“You’re a stubborn woman, aren’t you? How’s that working for you?”

At home, I started digging a compost pit to burn off my frustration. I tried brainstorming about my future––how to live life as a widow without two sticks to rub together. Curtis and I’d talked about traveling, maybe getting an RV or visiting the Australian outback. I’d always wanted to see Europe and go on a spa vacation with girlfriends. Take painting classes. But that cost real money. Nobody was jumping to hire a sixty-something widow. I needed to snag a job at a grocery store, teach a cooking class, or do light bookkeeping. Maybe all of that. I thought about my deejay days when I was a local celebrity of sorts. I had backstage VIP passes to see everybody from Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson to Emmy Lou Harris and Billy Joe Shaver. Men were dropping at my feet. You think it’s going to last forever, and next thing you know, you’re old, lonely, and living in a crappy trailer park next to an asshole.

I sensed someone watching me. I looked up to see Sylvie staring out her window. When our eyes connected, she disappeared. I was sure Bennett had forbidden her to talk to me.

That week, I began to dig my garden and amend the clay with bags of manure and mulch. My compost would not be ready for weeks. I wished the stink would blow Bennett’s way. I loved messing in the dirt, getting sweaty and filthy, and watching the green shoots come up. I planned to eat fresh salad all summer long and put up my surplus of fat zucchinis, tomatoes and habaneros for winter. Curtis had been a hot pepper man. Couldn’t go a day without them. I planted all Jesse’s favorites too: sunflowers, cherry tomatoes and Jack and the Bean Stalk pea pods. From the time he could walk, he loved playing in our garden. He helped me water and pull weeds. I used to picture myself in retirement as a sun-wrinkled grandma entertaining his kiddies in my back yard. Leukemia killed that dream.

A week later, another of my truck tires went flat. Then someone broke into my shed and stole some tools and winter boots.

In May, the rains came down hard. Willie and I were stuck in the Airstream for days. I watched out the window as half my garden washed away. On the opposite side of the trailer, the great bank of oaks and cedar that ringed the trailer park held up the inky belly of sky, bloated with rain. In June, the monsoons abated and the heat rocketed. On the weekends, Bennett held loud, raucous parties around the firepit. Week after week, he waged war, heaping bad juju on me any chance he got. Javier was right. I should have bought that beer.

The end of June, Bennett started whipping up a batch of his redneck art piles on his deck. Down at the dumpster unloading garbage, I overheard Miz Thorne bragging to a couple of gossips that he’d gotten a big order from a gallery. Back at my trailer, I poured a coffee for me and one for Curtis. Revenge had been more up his alley.

Around three a.m., after the trailer park fell asleep, I put on a black hoodie and leggings, carried out some old towels and blankets, and quiet as a ninja, wrapped up six of those ugly ass sculptures. One banged against my leg and I hopped around cursing silently. I jammed them in my truck bed, put the F-250 in neutral and coasted as far down the road as possible. I switched on the lights and engine and headed to meet Curtis’s ancient Uncle Harold halfway to Leander, where he lived in a shipping container and kept another full of old appliances and scrap for his fixit business. He waited at the appointed juncture wearing his trademark greasy overalls, a Rangers hat and a perpetual quarter inch of white stubble. We transferred the cairns to his truck.

“I never pegged you for a life of crime,” he said. “What’s a goody two shoes like you up to with this junk?”

“I just need you to hold on to it for a bit. It’s insurance. Believe it or not, they sell this stuff in art galleries.”

“I swanee, there’s no one dumber than a modern art collector. Oh, looky here.” Harold held up Bennett’s leather and turquoise bear necklace.

“Oh shit. That’s his good luck fetish.”

“Well, it’s mine now. Mebbe I’ll win the lottery.”

“Rub it three times and give it back. It might come in handy.”

“Maggie May, Curtis’d be damn proud of you.”

“I know. This was his idea.” Curtis gave better counsel dead than he ever did alive.

The next day, Bennett went on a rampage. He tore through my shed. We both called Javier who came down to referee. I let Bennett into my trailer. He banged around and looked in all my cupboards. Poor Willie couldn’t find a safe place to hide so he jumped out a window. “Unlock your truck,” Bennett demanded. Javier looked at me and shrugged sympathetically. I complied. Sylvie stood out by the pit, wringing her homemade caftan and crying quietly. “Satisfied?” Javier said.

“I know she’s behind it.” Bennett stormed off to his trailer, probably to get drunk.

Sylvie walked up to Javier and me. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. He’s real upset. That stuff is worth a lot of money to us.”

I cringed when she said “us.” Making Sylvie suffer was not my wish.

My eyes roamed over to the curse words on their trailer. “He does have enemies, doesn’t he?” Sylvie followed my gaze and nodded her head.

The next day, I walked the bear necklace over to the trailer when only Sylvie was home. “I found this in the road,” I said, “over there,” pointing to where the road led out of Sunny Acres.

“He’s going to be so happy to have this back, Maggie, you have no idea.”

On my first July 4th in Sunny Acres, my ripest heirloom tomatoes, along with my prized poblanos and cilantro, disappeared. As I picked what was left in my garden, Bennett made Sylvie cook chili on the firepit with the fresh ingredients I’d grown. She gave me a desperate look. I sped off in my truck to meet a book club friend in Austin for the fireworks, murdering Bennett in my head a million different ways. On my return, a plastic container of chili waited for me on my front step.

Sylvie wasn’t half bad. I felt sorry for her––overweight, half out of breath, under Bennett’s thumb. I admired the way she dressed in hippie skirt-pants and flowy tunics sewn from scraps. She had an original style. If ever a woman needed a gal pal, it was Sylvie. As well did I. No one but Javier would give me the time of day in Sunny Acres. Frankly, I was tired of talking to the cat.

One morning at sunrise, the sound of Bennett’s truck heading out woke me. Before the heat became intolerable, I whipped up my buttermilk biscuits. While they baked, I ran around the trailer, gussying up the place. It looked good, ready for my first guest. On second thought, I put Mr. Roo in the cupboard above the bed. Not for shame. Some things are sacred.

I set the warm biscuits on a plate, walked next door and knocked on Sylvie’s door. She opened it and I held up the biscuits. “Baked fresh from scratch. Made jam too. Come on over.”

She looked around, made sure the coast was clear, then stepped outside and followed me to my Airstream. Inside, she took in a sharp breath and scanned the interior. “This is the neatest, prettiest trailer I ever saw. And it smells so good in here.” I’d bought the trailer off a young couple starting a family. They’d renovated it, adding amber wood paneling curved to fit the domed ceiling, bronze vintage lights and wooden window shades. But it was the skylights and sound system that sold me. Gillian Welch sang softly over the speakers. Sylvie asked, “How do you keep it so nice?”

“No husband,” I said. We laughed. “It’s easy to keep neat because I don’t have much anymore. I sold what I could and gave away the rest.”

“Javier said you’re a widow.” No goddam secrets in Sunny Acres.

I nodded and busied myself getting the plates down. No need to tell her that he was my ruin, the reason I was stuck in this shithole. I could’ve used some sympathy, but Curtis hadn’t been dead seven months and if I spoke of him, I might come apart.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Sylvie said.

She ambled around oohing and aahing over this and that. I kept the Airstream tidy and clean, using every nook and cranny for storage. Sylvie admired the curved shelves that held my precious books and a few dozen albums I couldn’t part with. She studied the photos of Jesse hung on the scant wall space.

“My son. He passed.”

“I’m sorry, Maggie.” On a low shelf, stood his Lego minifigures. “What are those?”

“Jesse made them. That’s our family.” Mini Jesse wore a cowboy hat and held a keyboard guitar, Curtis a motorcycle helmet and hammer. Jesse had given me long red hair, bell bottoms and a microphone. “That kid got us to a T. He was a whiz at Legos from the time he could walk.”

“He sure liked cowboy hats,” Sylvie said.

“He didn’t want people to see his bald chemo head. His favorite nurse, Malik, called him Jesse James, the Lego Outlaw.”

Sylvie picked up Jesse’s Rubik’s cube. “Bennett can’t even do these.”

No surprise that. And no sense bragging about what a genius Jesse was. He could solve that cube in minutes, no matter how crazy Curtis scrambled it.

“Y’all have kids?” I asked.

“We tried. Bennett’s got a son somewhere. The boy’s mama took him away and cut ties. Broke Bennett’s heart.” His baby mama was no fool, but I knew what it was like to lose a child.

“I really wanted to give him another,” Sylvie said. “But I miscarried every time.”

“Oh Sylvie.” I squeezed her hand. “What’s Bennett up to?”

“The usual. Gone to Dallas a few days.” Meaning he was out doing whatever illegal shit he did to stay afloat.

“What did he say when you gave him back his bear necklace?”

Her eyes fixed on my photo wall. “He don’t believe you found it in the road. He’s real upset about his sculptures. If you know anything, Maggie––”

“––I’ll keep my ears open. Come sit over here.” I pointed to the built-in banquette. I’d found a sheepskin throw at a yard sale to lay over the couch, which served as seating for the pull-down side tables.

Sylvie squeezed onto the couch behind the drop table. I served our little breakfast. “Maggie, this is the best coffee I ever drunk.” She went on about the biscuits and jam until a faded polaroid on the wall by the table caught her eye. “Are you the pretty girl with the wild hair behind that microphone?”

“Yep. KOKE’s first lady deejay. They called me Maggie May. Helped put Outlaw Country on the map. Had to make coffee and do the secretarial but it got me on air.” In the last months of Jesse’s life, they held my job open. Once I returned, they took me off the air and stuck me on office work and ad sales. I was forty-three. They wanted someone younger and hipper, someone not carrying the dregs of grief.

“I love the music you play out in the garden,” she said. On cue, James McMurtry’s raw voice filled the trailer.

I’d taken to putting my phone on speaker when Bennett’s truck was gone. “I can’t live without my music.”

Willie scratched at the door. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

“No, Bennett is. I wish we could have a kitty.” I let Willie in. He jumped on the couch and snuggled against Sylvie. She petted him tentatively. “His fur is so soft.” Willie crawled into her lap and it looked like she might cry.

We sat quietly enjoying our repast. Didn’t take much coaxing for her to accept seconds.

Sylvie buttered a biscuit with intense concentration. “You know, deep down, Bennett’s a good person,” she said. “He’s so smart and such a great artist. I really don’t know what he sees in me—except he does like plus size women.” She winked and we both giggled.

I wondered why she couldn’t see what a bully and lowlife thief Bennett was. Better to keep that to myself. “Sylvie, you’re an artist too. Look at the clothes you design.”

“I make my own ‘cause it’s cheap and I can’t fit into nothing else.”

“Well, they’re one of a kind. Those harem pants and tunics with the renaissance sleeves. It’s upcycling. That’s in now. You could sell that stuff.”

“I do. My sis and I’ve been copying ‘em to take to craft fairs and concerts.”

“Well, you’re a fashion designer and you should be proud.”

Sylvie blushed. “Maggie, can I help you with your garden?”

I loaned her a straw hat and put her to work pulling weeds and picking cukes. The squash vines were spilling over and the garden sent up a tart green scent. I tore us some fresh mint to chew and started staking tomatoes. Sylvie sang country tunes and sounded pretty good. Soon we were harmonizing on Dolly and Joni, Lucinda Williams and Kasey Musgrave songs. The creamy mesquite blossoms spun their honeyed perfume around us. The afternoon heat revved up to tropical. Sylvie sat down to catch her breath on one of the stumps I’d set around the garden. I went in for lemonade.

As I returned, a Jimmy careened around the curve, kicking up a storm of dust. It pulled up in front of Sylvie’s trailer. She heaved herself off the stump and scrambled as fast as she could toward her place. One of Bennett’s sketchy pals got out of the truck. I recognized him from the firepit circle, a skinny guy with dyed black shoe polish hair and tattoos crowding his neck. He shot me a venomous look and turned his slow, mean voice on Sylvie.

“Consortin’ with the enemy, fatty?”

“We was just picking vegetables, Rondo. Bennett’s not home.”

“He owes me.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow with your money.”

“I’ll be back to get it. Tell him I was here.” Rondo glared at me one last time before getting in the Jimmy. He swiveled onto the road, leaving us inhaling dirt.

“I hope that creep don’t say anything to Bennett about me hanging out with you.”

“He sure didn’t like me,” I said.

“He wanted your lot. It was supposed to go to him.”

“No wonder Bennett hates me.” I walked the lemonade over to her. “This’ll clear your throat.”

She drank it. “Thanks. You make lemonade like you do everything else.” She handed me the glass. “It’s not your fault. Bennett just needs to know you like I do … I better say goodbye.” She started toward her trailer, turned back and threw her arms around me. It felt like being held by a warm cloud of patchouli and cinnamon. I didn’t want to let go. “Maggie, this was the best day I’ve had in years.”

She walked away and on impulse, I called out, “Maybe Rondo took the sculptures. He looked pretty mad.”

She turned around and grinned. “I’ll bet he did. I’m gonna text Bennett.”

As soon as she said it, a chill of fear went through me. I was playing with fire now.

The next morning, Sylvie did not emerge from her trailer. The Tacoma had showed up overnight. I went to work out in the garden. Mid-morning Rondo skidded around the bend, parked next to the Tacoma and disappeared into the Jones’s singlewide.

In minutes, Bennett burst out of the trailer carrying an armload of Sylvie’s clothing scraps and piles of tie-dyed cloth. He dumped it in the firepit ash with Sylvie on his tail, pleading for him to stop. He looked straight into my eyes with pure meanness. Sylvie scooped up the filthy fabric pieces in her arms and cried.

Rondo strode out of the trailer straight to my garden, picked a fat, ripe Early Girl and fast-balled it at my head. I dodged but it splatted against my shoulder.

I hustled into my trailer and slammed the door. I smashed my fist into my mattress and had a good cry. How did I ever think I could win at this game? I never meant for Sylvie to get hurt. I was piling up enemies by the minute.

When I went outside, Bennett was sitting on his deck cleaning his guns. He picked up a handgun, aimed it my way and feigned shooting me. I made myself breathe deep and do some work in the garden until he went in the house. I’d be damned before I’d let Bennett Jones think he could scare me.

I let myself into my trailer and screamed into a pillow. Poor Willie jumped up from his nap and scrambled to hide in the bathroom. My heart pounded. I started opening storage cabinets, but I could not remember where our guns were. I looked up to the heavens and implored my dead husband, “Curtis, where are they?”

I swear, the door to a storage cupboard above my bed popped open. Inside, I found the plastic bin labeled “CURTIS.” I pulled it down. On top lay one of his T-shirts I’d rescued from the dirty clothes after he died. I held it to my face and inhaled. I closed my eyes and remembered Curtis slipping his arms around me in our kitchen. “Looks good. Cooks good,” he’d said. It was one of the few moments when we let go of our grief. We’d been on our feet long enough to make some kind of a life again. I had my work, my walking group and book club. Curtis had gambling.

I dug deeper past file folders and an old watch. At the very bottom lay the purple box holding the Ruger he bought for me; a hard case housed his Sig. Curtis started taking me to the shooting range after our honeymoon. “You need to learn to protect yourself, girl. If anyone messes with you, you make ’em regret it.” At the range, he pressed against my back and held his hand over my gun hand while I aimed. “Just don’t shoot me,” he whispered.

I opened the box containing the Ruger; it needed some love and I was ready to give it. I aimed it through my window at Bennett’s empty chair on the deck. “I’ve got a gun too, Bennett Jones, and I bet I can outshoot you.”

I spent some productive time with the Ruger, getting it back into shape. It was a sleek, semi-compact with a flashy purple belly and smooth profile that kept it from snagging if you needed to draw fast.

Early morning, someone knocked on my door. I stuck the Ruger in the back of my jeans and cracked it open. “To what do I owe the honor, Miz Thorne?”

“Lift up my tank, city girl. And call me Wanda.”

I stepped down and hauled up her oxygen.

Inside, she sucked in the air. “Smells like money.”

“Hardly. Don’t have a pot to pee in.”

“Alrighty, I guess I’ll tell Bennett you made off in the night with his doohickeys.”

“He already searched here high and low.”

“Honey, I don’t sleep good, but I sure loved watching your antics at three a.m.” She wandered around picking up things and eyeballing my shelves.

My chest tightened. “You didn’t tell Bennett?”

“That would’ve been fun, but not as lucrative. What’s it worth to you to keep my mouth shut?” I was starting to understand why nice people kill.

“I don’t have anything. Just my pitiful social security. I swear.”

She picked up Jesse’s Rubik’s Cube. “I’ll take this as a souvenir then. Can’t wait to see the look on Bennett’s face.”

“You can’t take that!” I leaped toward her, grabbed the cube and stubbed my toe on the oxygen tank. “Ow!”

“Whoa, girlie. You better give me something better.” That woman could make a hornet look cuddly. She waited a few seconds, then headed for the door.

“Wait Miz Wanda! You like guns?”

“No darlin’. I love ‘em.”

I hated to let go of Curtis’s Sig. But it was either that or my truck. I had to buy time until I formulated a plan for the stolen objets d’art.

“Bye honey,” she said, the gun case pinned under her arm. “Nice doin’ business with ‘ya. I’ll be back soon for more.”

I drove straight to the shooting range and shredded some bullseyes. The only thing that would’ve made that more fun were cutout targets of Bennett and Wanda.

Javier dropped by that Thursday. “Listen, yesterday Bennett said, ‘Wouldn’t Maggie be upset if she came home and her little cat was gone.’ I’m sure he was just blowing hot air.”

“I’ll kill him if he lays a hand on Willie.”

“I’ve got a vacancy down by the roller rink. At least you’d be far from Bennett.”

“You mean put up with the late-night disco parties––barfing, fighting and fucking in the parking lot? No thanks. Tell me this: why aren’t you standing up for me against him?”

I’d never seen Javier lose his cool but he looked plenty pissed off. He said nothing, just headed for his car. I ran after him, “Wait, I’m sorry, Javier. I know you’re looking out for me.”

He opened the car door. “You never bought him that beer, did you? Probably too late.” Inside, he rolled down the window. “You better not have taken those sculptures. If I find out you did, it’s adios.”

It wasn’t fair, after everything Bennett had done, but I held my tongue.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I’d fallen for Willie at the kill shelter after Curtis took ill. His mama had thrown him out in an alley, the flea-bitten runt of the litter. Some beastie tore up the scrappy little thing. I saved him from execution and paid a fortune to the vet. I thought Willie might cheer up Curtis, but bringing that kitty home was as much for my sake. He cleaned up good and I brushed him till his silvery fur glowed. He dropped the feral act after he realized we were on his side and started cuddling between us at night.

Curtis had been sleeping in his truck when his health bottomed out. I scraped and borrowed from family to buy time with the bank so we could stay long enough in the house that he could die at home.

In the end, after Curtis lost his words, he mouthed “Willie” and I brought the little guy to him. Willie snuggled up to Curtis and put his paw on his chest. Best cat in the world.

Curtis died in my arms. I’d loved him for thirty-four years and hated him the last few. When you are midwife to someone’s passing, hatred feels like a cowardly emotion. My anger at him remained. And my love.

I drove around Austin, looking at some of the fancy trailer parks, but nothing felt right. When I got home, Sylvie was waiting. The Tacoma was gone.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“With his brother in Austin.”

“I’m so sorry about what happened to your fabric. I feel terrible about it.”

“He’s got money problems. He’s got to take it out on someone. I’m pretty mad at him. I’m gonna stay with my sister.”

“You said deep down he was a good man.”

She looked hard at me. “He’s got it out for you.”

Inside the trailer, Willie eyed me suspiciously. He’d been skittish since the night I went crazy looking for the guns. “I’m sorry, Willie. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to find another home soon.” I leaned down to pick him up, but he ran into the bathroom.

The next morning was already a scorcher at sunrise. I thought I better keep Willie inside, both for the weather and Bennett. I was headed for a doctor’s appointment in Austin. “You stay, Willie. Stay in and stay cool.” I opened the door carefully, eyes still on him and tried to slip out but he shot through the opening.

When I got back, no Willie, but the Tacoma was back in its spot. I checked the shed, the only place with a kitty door. No Willie there either. I put on my boots and jeans to search for him. As hot as it was, I armored up in case of an encounter with a snake or wild animal. I stuck my new best friend, the Ruger, in my belt, and grabbed a baggie of chicken pieces. Willie loved my chicken.

I combed the fields and woods where he liked to hunt, calling his name with no luck. I bargained with God to shave a few years off my life, take my truck, whatever, but bring Willie home safe. I prayed to my mama and daddy, my sweet baby boy, and my dead husband to lead me to him. Curtis was probably playing Hold’em in Hell, but I was taking help wherever I could. I feared I was wasting my time. Surely, Bennett had finally made good on his threat.

I pulled the Ruger out and headed back toward the trailers. The last several yards I was so jacked up I lunged into a sticker bush, tore my T-shirt and scratched my arms pretty bad, but I could hardly feel it. I was panting, my heart and lungs strained from running around in the hot sun––I had not thought to bring water.

I could hear voices arguing. I came up behind the back of Bennett and Sylvie’s trailer and took cover, sticking my head out enough to see they were both on the deck in a tug of war over Sylvie’s suitcase. Bennet yelled, “Don’t leave, woman, you’ll regret it!”

Sylvie yelled back, “You can’t even say you’re sorry!”

I slowly circled in front of them, gun pointed at Bennett. “Sylvie,” I said in a rough, low voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away, “go inside the trailer.” She did not move, frozen in shock.

“Wai … wai … wait, whoa Nelly,” Bennett said, holding his hands out as if that would stop me. “What the fuck are you doing, woman?”

“What did you do to my cat?”

“I didn’t do nothing to your little pissant cat. Why would I waste my time on him?”

“You’ve been telling everybody you were going to kill Willie.”

“Who told you that?”

“You said I’d be upset if I came home and found my cat gone.”

“Well fuck, I was right, wasn’t I? You are very fucking upset. But I did not touch your stupid cat. I haven’t even been here.”

“I am going to count to ten and then I’m going to aim for your foot and hope that’s what I hit unless you tell me where Willie is.”

“You think you can hit me with that little lavender lady gun?” I pivoted left and blew up the farthest of his scrap turd piles masquerading as art.

“Oh shit,” Bennett said.

“One, two, three—” I counted.

“He’s telling the truth, Maggie, he’s been gone since yesterday,” Sylvie called out.

“—six, seven, eight—”

“Bennett, you are telling the truth, right?” Sylvie pleaded.

“—nine, ten.”

“Yes!” He jumped back. I shot the deck where his feet were planted the moment before.

“Maggie, stop!” Sylvie yelled. “Put your gun down. Please. I swear he did not hurt Willie. I would never let him hurt Willie.”

I kept my gun trained on Bennett.

“You swear, Bennett. You swear now,” Sylvie begged.

“Yes, yes, I swear, I never got around to fucking with her cat. I have no idea what happened to him.”

“Please, Maggie.” Sylvie walked toward me.

“Are you nuts, woman?!” Bennett yelled at Sylvie. “She’s got a loaded gun and she is nuts!”

“No, you’re not, are you, Maggie? Please, put the gun down.”

Sylvie walked closer to me. I couldn’t believe she would risk her life for Bennett. I slowly eased the gun down on the ground and collapsed. She got down on her knees and folded me into the soft pillow of her body. I wept in her arms. “Please, I have to find Willie. My husband’s dead. He’s all I’ve got left.”

A voice yelled, “Bennett! Do I need to be calling the authorities?” Across the street, old Wanda Thorne stood on her porch, cradling a sawed-off like a baby, a cigarette in her other hand.

“No ma’am,” Bennett answered. “Just some friendly target practice.”

“Alrighty. Keep your powder dry.” She stepped back inside.

Sylvie patted my hair. “It’s okay, Maggie, we’re going to help you find Willie.”

“Hell, if I am going to look for the fucking cat! And you’re not going out there either.”

“Please, please help me,” I begged. “I’ll give you back your precious art junk. Just please tell me where he is.”

“I knew it!” Bennett yelled. He jumped down off the deck and was on me in a second, hands squeezing my neck. I tried to pull his hands off, but I was choking, my body pinned under him.

“Bennett, stop, you’re gonna kill her.” Sylvie used her body weight to push him off me and he fell on his side. They lay there panting while I gasped for air. Sylvie gave me a most sorrowful look. “Maggie, I trusted you. What have you done?”

“What do you expect? He slashed my tires, messed up my trailer, stole from me. He’s made my life a living hell. Do you blame me?”

“Where are my sculptures, woman?”

I reached for my gun. “Help me find my cat and I’ll give them back––or I’ll shoot off your little peepee.”

“Deal. Okay? Deal!”

We clambered up and brushed ourselves off.

I went inside my trailer to grab a water bottle. I put the gun down in case I got riled again, but the anger had drained from my system. Bennett seemed to be speaking truth. No telling where Willie was.

We split up and fanned out, Sylvie in the direction I’d loosely covered before and Bennett headed to Cedar Elm Lane. The light stayed with us. I could hear their faint voices across the field calling Willie. Soon, Sylvie screamed she found him. I ran toward her voice.

A rusty animal trap gripped Willie’s leg tight. He was bleeding badly. I dropped down to the ground, stroked his head and promised to free him. I pressed on the springs but they would not budge. Sylvie tried standing on them to no avail. Willie screamed in pain. He’d already torn his leg trying to pull free.

Sylvie nudged me. I looked up and saw Bennett galumphing toward us through the high grass like a giant unleashed from a fairy tale, his skinny legs naked between his cowboy boots and Bermuda shorts, tattooed arms flaring out from his Hawaiian shirt, one hand hoisting a tool box, the other arm balancing him like a ballerina. For once, I was happy to see him. He threw me a towel and started barking orders. “Cover his eyes!” He spritzed some WD-40 on the springs and did some hocus pocus with wire and pliers.

“You sure know your way around that trap,” I said.

“I did not put that here, I swear. You want your cat free or not?”

“Yes––please.”

Bennett popped that sucker and we freed Willie’s leg. I wrapped him in the towel and ran to my truck. I looked back and saw Bennett on his knees, his arms around Sylvie’s legs, his face buried in her skirt.

Willie lost his left front leg. He was a smart, brave little guy and I knew he’d manage without it. I could barely leave my trailer for two days. I lay in bed and watched my three-legged cat work out how he would move through the world for the rest of his life. The second morning, Sylvie knocked on my door. She refused to come in. “You lied to me, Maggie. You used me.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvie. I was freaked out and angry at Bennett. I never intended to hurt you. I’ve wanted to be your friend from the start. Still do, if you’ll ever forgive me.”

“You promised to give those sculptures back. If you don’t do it in twenty-four hours, I will not stand in the way of my husband’s revenge.”

I called Uncle Harold. My salvation resided in his hands. He said he’d be there before nightfall. I dragged myself out of bed and drove off to check out a trailer park. They were few and far between, and pricey, what with developers buying them up and building condos for the rich techies who were taking over Austin. I returned late afternoon after a fruitless search and found Uncle Harold sitting with Bennett on his deck under an umbrella, smoking weed and passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. They were laughing and trading tall tales like old war buddies, the redneck sculptures arranged in an audience around them.

“Hey,” Bennett called out. “How’s Willie the Gimp?”

“Better. Taking some good drugs for the pain.”

“Well, if you got any extra––” I gave him a dirty look. “Just kidding. So, is it true you’re Maggie May, the deejay?”

Harold winked at me. He’d been doing some free public relations. “That’s what they called me a hundred years ago.”

“I was a big fan. Used to listen to you on my Walkman under the covers after my parents went to sleep. You’re a legend.”

“Only in Travis County for a hot minute.” Last image I wanted to picture was a pimply teenage Bennett raising a boner from my voice on the radio.

Bennett shook his head in disbelief. “Maggie May. Living next door. Fuck me dead.”

After that, Sylvie brought me groceries and sat on the bed snuggling Willie. She was still angry, but when we sang together, her heart softened.

In late September, I heard a banging on my front stoop. I opened the door to find one of Bennett’s oily cairns with a card propped up against it. “Party tomorrow night at 8 by the fire pit.” I went in my shed later for potting dirt and there were my winter boots and missing tools. Somehow, my voice had reached across time and struck a truce between me and Bennett Jones. But it did not make us best friends.

I couldn’t decide if I was ready to go to a party. In my half-sleep that night, I heard Curtis say, wear that green ruffly country dress. He loved me in that dress.

After our son died, I crawled into Jesse’s bed and stayed there for months. Curtis fended for himself and slept alone. He’d go to work and bring food back, but I could hardly eat. I’d dip into Jesse’s Lego bucket and reminisce or play the junior keyboard we gave him for his birthday. Often, I woke with Curtis spooned around me in that kiddy-sized bed, my neck wet with his tears. He begged me to come back to our bedroom. “I can’t have sex now, Curtis. That’s the last thing on my mind.”

“Not that,” he said. “I just need you to come back to me.” I did not. I was selfish in my pain. I guess it was my fault he joined the poker club. He needed something to do and somewhere to go where people would treat him like a man and he could forget his grief.

He’d been with me all these months, helping me make my way in Sunny Acres. Maybe it was time for my heart to forgive.

The next day, I went out and bought a couple six packs of Zilker Marco and dropped them off to Bennett. He answered the door and looked at me funny, like I was from another planet. “I heard you like this beer,” I said. “I never thanked you for saving Willie.”

“You’re welcome, Maggie May. You know Sylvie would leave me if I touched a hair on that cat. And Javier would kick my butt.”

I laughed. Damn fool me. Now I needed to buy a good bottle of red for Javier.

I showered and washed my hair, put on the green dress and my cowgirl boots, and joined the circle around the firepit. Sylvie patted the stump next to her, shining in a patch of moonlight. A shower of sparks blew up in the air and Bennett raised a can of Zilker Marco to me. Miz Wanda Thorne, of all people, handed me a joint. I bogarted that jay with a breath so deep and long the entire circle applauded. Somebody pulled out a guitar, so I went into the Airstream and grabbed Curtis’s beat-to-shit ukulele. Sylvie and I wowed the partiers with our sisterly harmonies, my smoky alto weaving under her sweet soprano.

As the jokes and songs trailed off and conversations quieted to whispers, I leaned my head on Sylvie’s shoulder, closed my eyes and fell into a dream. Two little Mexican girls pulled me along by each hand, calling, “Abuela, Abuela, come see.” My hands belonged to an old woman, liver-spotted and knotty-fingered. My hair hung wild, a mass of wiry gray sticking out of my straw hat. Kids ran to join us from all directions swinging their baskets. An endless garden grew under our bare feet and spread down Cedar Elm. Sweet potato vines stretched up to the trailers, next to giant corn stalks and tomato plants bejeweled in ripe gold and red fruit. The little girls giggled as their small brown fingers tucked juicy cherry tomatoes in my mouth. We meandered from garden to garden, filling baskets with fat squash and peppers, leafy herbs and greens, Sunny Acres finally living up to its good name. Neighbors waved and clapped for us. No, for me. I was the mother of these gardens.

I woke to see the sun peel away the dark and paint the sky and low hills scarlet and orange. Hidden in the trees, a choir of birds sang their holy call and response. The silhouettes of willows and linden glowed a rosy gold. A bed of hot pink and yellow purslane I’d planted on the edge of my garden lit up like Christmas. Nothing like a sweet dream and a Texas sunrise to crack your heart open.

Bennett lifted a kettle off the coals with a potholder and poured me a cup of cowboy coffee. He held up a flask, “Hair of the dog?” I nodded yes. Sylvie walked around the fire to kiss Bennett’s ugly mug. He wound his arms around her and kissed her cheek.

Javier joined us, all spruced up in a white Mexican wedding shirt and pressed khakis. He looked undeniably handsome, his kind eyes and caramel skin warmed by the early light. He sat on the stump next to me. “You sticking around? I got a wait list.”

“I thought it was adios for me.”

“The powers that be have granted you another chance.”

“Don’t fuck it up,” Bennett called out.

Javier reached out his coffee mug and tapped it against mine. “Welcome to Sunny Acres, young lady. Rent due next Friday. Come on by and take a whack at the piñata.”

And thus, I stayed.

Lauri Maerov’s essays and fiction have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Kalliope, Raleigh Review, Another Chicago Magazine (ACM Fiction Prize winner), Marco Polo Arts, Bright Flash Literary Review, and the anthologies Every Woman Has a Story (Warner Books) and Unsnare Time’s Warp (Main Street Rag). She is a 2025 graduate of Queens University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.

Outline

May 14, 2025

“Morning,” oil on canvas, by George Inness, c. 1878.

I’ve never seen such a beautiful sunrise: blackberry purple fading into sherbet orange and all the other delicious colors in between. It’s a little reminder that I’m still me, that this is the same life that I’ve always been living, that everything will be okay, even after another night clinging to the pillow like it’s an old memory I’m scared to lose.

It’s taken me a few days, but I’m getting used to my new room: walls the color of daffodil petals, a pudgy recliner, a window facing the lawn and the sunrise beyond. My daughter offered to let me move in with her, like I did for my own mom when she was my age, but I know that I’m “going,” and just like the other kind of “going,” I don’t want to feel rushed, with my daughter tapping her foot outside the door, wondering when I’ll finally be done. Instead, I’m taking photos of the things that I can’t forget to tell her about when she visits. The sunrise makes for a perfect first picture. I shake the film dry, check the timestamp, and put it in my dresser.

When I close the drawer, I find a card propped on top, the empty chrysalis of its envelope lying beside it, like it’s been waiting for me to unfold its new wings. Every day is a fresh start, it says over watercolor clouds, and on the inside, but I’ll never forget the ones we’ve shared. It comes with a picture of my daughter, as clean and crisp as if I’d just taken it myself. I leave for breakfast, my camera around my neck, my daughter in my pocket.

The dining room here feels like a school cafeteria: different food-smells dogpiling on top of bleach and black pepper, tables all jostling each other for space, administrators watching from the room’s periphery in case anybody chokes. The only difference is that this place has itchy burgundy banquet chairs instead of hard plastic stools, and there’s nobody shoving pepperoni sticks up their nose. That, and everyone here is old.

I take my tray to my usual table. A nurse with a greasy ponytail rolls an old lady (well, my age, but older in some intangible way) between two chairs across from me. He mashes her wheelchair’s brakes with his shoe and drops a plate onto the table. The old woman keeps staring at the pancakes wobbling on top even after he’s walked away, her purple-orange shawl mounded almost all the way up to her cloud of gray hair.

I tell her, “Good morning!” like I always do.

Her gaze floats up to me. You could fall into those eyes for hours and never reach the bottom. “I’m Victoria,” she says, like she always does.

I show Victoria the card that I found. Usually, it’s hard for me to talk about my daughter, like trying to draw a beautiful painting from memory: I know how seeing her makes me feel, but there are so many important details that I’m always scared I’ll forget one—her cheeks just made for smiling, or the pink streak in her hair that I’ve always felt just a bit jealous of. But with this picture to help, talking about her feels wonderful, and almost effortless.

“Next time she comes visit,” I tell Victoria, “I’ll introduce you to her.”

Victoria stares at the picture like she’s afraid the person in it might vanish if she blinks. “I can’t remember the last time someone came to see me.”

It’s all I can do not to reach across the table, just to hug her, be hugged, clear the gloom from the space between us. “I’ll come to see you,” I say. “Tomorrow morning. For breakfast.”

She blinks, startling a teardrop off her eyelashes. Her red lipstick stretches into a smile. I toast her with my orange juice. It tastes like sunshine.

*

It’s already getting colder, geese wobbling south across the pre-dawn sky, all the bushes and trees changing into their fall colors. But it also makes things cozy, which might be the most scrumptious feeling there is. After breakfast, everyone crowds around the common area’s fireplace to knit or color or stare into space. I sit in the easy chair with the peeling cushions, the community cat on my lap thrumming like a radiator.

Before long, the nurses walk in with someone way too young to live here. They introduce her as our dance instructor, and inform us that we’ll be learning swing dance, and it will be fun, and they won’t hear any arguments about it.

I don’t know anything about swing dance. My body, though, remembers in an instant. The trombones and trumpets slip-‘n’-slide out of the instructor’s portable speaker, and I’m suddenly out of my chair, feet shuffling, hips shimmying, arms whipping around me like long silk ribbons. Nothing exists but this moment, and this moment is a cymbal crash, shimmery and shivering and ecstatic.

One of the nurses snaps a picture. Some whoop and whistle. Even Victoria is clapping (only on the inside, but I can tell by the way her shoulders hang less heavy than usual). Between songs, this handsome man comes and asks me—asks me—if I’d like to dance. I recognize him from where he always sits at breakfast, over at the bar. I’ve spent a lot of time looking over at that bar.

After we’re done, he bows to me from his wheelchair, holds out his hand, and escorts me back to my seat. He leans closer. He smells like pine trees and rainwater. “I’m Bo,” he whispers.

I tell him my name. “Thanks for the dance.”

Bo takes one of the coloring-book markers from the table beside us, writes his room number on the back of my hand, and rolls away with a wink. I giggle. I can’t remember the last time I giggled like that.

Later, after the night nurses have made their rounds, and the last sleepwalker shuffles out of the hallway, I throw my robe over my briefs and compression stockings like it’s a slinky red dress. I open Bo’s door. He turns from the window, head teeter-tottering. “I was wondering when I’d see you again,” he says.

But as I sit in the armchair beside him, his face gets all rubbery with confusion. He doesn’t recognize me—or, he recognized me wrong. He thought I was his wife. It hurts, but it could’ve happened to any of us. I tell him the story about us dancing.

He says that sounds wonderful.

I tell him it was.

He says I’m even more beautiful than his wife was, he thinks.

I tell him he isn’t quite as handsome as my husband was, but he’s close.

He smiles at that, stretchy as strawberry taffy, and asks if I’d like to hold hands.

I say yes, I’d like that a lot.

He lays his head on my shoulder. I rest my hand over his.

We stay like that all the way until sunrise.

*

When I lived alone, all I had to remember was hair appointments each Monday, cooking club once a month, and the endless spin through holidays with cooking shows filling the gaps between. Here, though, we have so many activities that it’s hard to get pictures of them all. We’ve decorated cookies, and painted by number, and even played kazoo (which was more painful and more fun than I would’ve expected). And that’s not counting the nurses challenging people to checkers like it’s their job, or the destitute puzzles scattered across coffee tables, sniffling for someone to help them find their missing pieces.

Even this morning at breakfast, the nurses are handing out flyers. Each has dice and chess pieces printed around the edge, Game Night in the center in film-noir font, a fedora tilted down over the G’s forehead. They’ve set out prize baskets for the winners, too: the best one has socks fuzzier than the community cat, and a coloring book with fresh colored pencils, and even real sodas, which they never let us have here.

“We can team up!” I tell Victoria. I don’t know whether there will be teams, but I want Victoria on mine anyway.

Just then, though, Victoria’s nurse appears out of nowhere. “She’ll have to miss it,” he says, grabbing her wheelchair’s handles. “She’s got a doctor’s appointment. Specialist. Out of town. Going to be someone else’s problem for a few days.”

He leans on Victoria’s wheelchair and slouches out of the dining room, his ponytail a long, dark smear down his back, Victoria’s napkin still spread across her lap. I shuffle over to Bo at the bar and ask whether he’d like to team up instead. He just shakes his head. His head always shakes these days, but this shake has something final in it. I tell Bo that’s okay and give him a little side hug. He shrugs off my arm, coughs, and spits brown mucus into his bib. A splotch of old sweat smell stains his rainwater scent.

Bo hasn’t been himself since he got sick last month. These days, I’m not sure he remembers that night we spent holding hands. The nurses always say we “get worse” with stress or change. I think that’s why they never let anything change here—same breakfast every morning, same gentle jazz in the dining room, same steady warmth no matter what season. What’s harder on us than anything, though, is feeling alone. That’s why I’d wanted to partner up. Game night together would’ve made for such a fun memory. Who knows how many more we’ll have?

*

Victoria is coming back! She’s been gone for what feels like forever, having some appointment that I don’t think either of us really ever understood the purpose of. That’s what her nurse tells me this morning, at least, when I ask him where Victoria is. He makes it sound like he doesn’t really understand the appointment’s purpose either, but for different reasons, which makes me angry, but mostly sad.

I make Victoria a Welcome Home sign during our crafts activity, and wrap a ribbon around one of the sodas I’ve been saving for a special occasion for I don’t know how long, and even find some pancakes-and-syrup jellybeans in the gift shop to make up for all those breakfasts she’s missed. I take everything to one of the lobby chairs, along with the community cat and a coloring book that I found on my nightstand, and wait for Victoria to get here.

It takes longer than I’d expected. So long that the community cat hops off my lap to find something more fun to ignore than me. So long that my nurse brings me a sandwich, then another at dinnertime, and makes me get up and waddle around so the blood in my legs doesn’t get all sticky. So long that the streetlights outside flicker on, and the common-area chandelier flickers off, and the day nurses flicker out to be replaced with the night ones.

And then, finally, just as I’m dozing off with the coloring book all filled in beside me, a van wobbles into the parking lot. It nuzzles into an open spot and shuts its headlights with a tired snuffle, and under the dome light, staring out the windshield with her big whirlpool eyes, is Victoria.

She’s brought a man with her. The wind tugs at his black wool coat as he circles around to the passenger side, unfolds a wheelchair, and lifts Victoria into it like an antique vase. Before he starts pushing her toward the entrance, he snugs her knit beanie over her ears. I love him for that.

The sliding doors open for Victoria like they’ve been waiting their whole lives for this moment. She doesn’t look up when I cheer her name and snap a picture, but the man does. He has a beautiful smile, wide and bright as a rising moon. He bends down and points. “Vickie, they made you a sign.”

Victoria’s head stays tilted sideways, the curve of her neck an open parenthesis.

The man parks her wheelchair by the empty front desk. “She’s had a long day,” he apologizes. “Thanks for the welcome, though. It means a lot knowing she’s well cared for. You a nurse here?”

I giggle and bat his arm. Compared to the nurses here, I look like a popped balloon. “Just Victoria’s friend,” I say. “We do breakfast together every morning, activities in the afternoons. Are you her son?”

His smile wanes to a thin, slivered crescent. “No.” The smile goes dark. “Husband.” We both look down at the wheelchair handle, his bare knuckles wrapped around it. He releases his grip. “Ex.”

Before I can say anything, he turns back to the sliding doors, his coat collar lifted against the cold. Victoria stares at the blanket across her lap, tucked so carefully under her knees.

I didn’t know she’d had a husband. Maybe she doesn’t know it, either. That thought rips me to tiny confetti pieces, the kind left on the floor of a birthday party that nobody came to, after you’ve turned off all the lights, and lain your head down on the table to cry.

I rip my gaze away from parking lot after what feels like just a moment, but Victoria is already gone, the night nurse pushing her into her room down the hall.

*

The clouds cover the sunrise this morning. It still makes me smile, though, knowing the sun is also smiling at the world even when the world just wants to stay under the covers, the way I used to when my mom would flick on the lights before school and sing, goooood mo-rning, good mor-ning, to yoouuu.

I catch a picture of Victoria at our usual table, staring down at the syrup crystallizing around her pancakes, like she’s never been gone at all. “Hey, stranger!” I say. “Remember me?”

Victoria looks up. Confusion bunches in her brow. She wrings her napkin, like this task before her is direly important, an exam that she’s suddenly realizing she hasn’t studied for.

“We’re friends,” I say quickly. “Don’t worry. Someday, I’m sure I’ll be the one who for—”

I clap my teeth shut, but too late. Already, the truth is creeping into my peripheral vision, crawling along on eight hairy, pincered legs.

*

I wake up this morning and don’t know where I am only that it isn’t home or where I should be or anywhere safe, so I try calling my daughter but the phone isn’t like any phone I’ve used before, the numbers are all in the wrong places, I think some are even missing, I can’t find the call button, and the light switch isn’t anywhere not anywhere I’ve felt all the walls and the switch must’ve fallen off like a leprous nose leaving only the curtains like sewn-shut eyelids over the window and the mirror stretching its jaws wide to swallow my reflection whole, so I hide under the covers in the dark and make myself as small as possible and whimper for help, help, help, even though I don’t know if anyone can hear me.

But then the lights flick on. A lady walks in wearing something like pajamas. She helps me up, and sits with me on the edge of the bed, rubbing my back, shushing me, telling me everything will be alright.

Familiarity fills in the room like a coloring sheet. The light switch, right where it’s always been. The buttons on the camera—not phone, camera. And that’s a nurse, and those are scrubs, and this is a bedroom, my bedroom.

I peek out the curtains. It isn’t morning at all. The sky is completely black.

*

Soft, plump snowflakes parachute down to launch their festive siege on the world. Each time one lands, I can almost hear a muted cheer from their friends catching them below. I watch through the dining-room windows, mounding my fluffy scrambled eggs into a scrambledeggman and drawing on a face with ketchup, which I don’t usually like, but makes the scrambledeggman way more cheerful. Victoria’s nurse walks past to stink-eye her uneaten breakfast. He tells us not to forget about the carolers coming today. I tell him we won’t, even though the fact that they’re coming is a total surprise to me. “What’s your favorite carol?” I ask Victoria.

Victoria just keeps watching the pulp blizzarding around in my orange juice. “I don’t know.”

I laugh. A few egg flurries fly from my mouth. “I know! There are just too many good ones! I like ‘White Christmas.’ I hope they sing that one.”

They do sing it, when they come that afternoon. Grade-schoolers can’t really pull off the Bing Crosby warble, but they try, their scarves bunched under their chubby cheeks even with the common area’s fireplace behind them. After they leave, the nurses pass out cookies and ask everyone what we want from Santa. I say that I’m happy just the way that I am, because I have fuzzy socks and the community cat and friends inside and snow outside and my daughter who promised she’d come visit sometime. I hold Victoria’s hand when I say the thing about friends, so she knows I’m talking about her. The nurse sitting beside me squeezes my hand, too, clutching a paper coffee cup to her chest, and it feels like I’ve gotten my Christmas present early.

Bo slouches in his chair, his skinny arms hanging limp on either side of his potbelly. He smells warm and itchy, like old, yellowed armchair stuffing. “What a stupid,” he wheezes. He flaps his jaw bonelessly, staring at the hot chocolate in his lap like the words he’s looking for are drifting, unseen, in its murk. “A stupid. Question. I’m not a. A freaking. Toddler. Just wish I could. Play. In the snow.”

I turn to the nurse beside me. A smile piles up on her cheeks like fresh snowdrifts.

Ten minutes later, Bo and I burst out the front doors, bundled up in our wheelchairs with marshmallow coats and pompom hats, our nurses shivering and smiling and snapping pictures behind us. Bo whoops and lobs snowballs into the darkness—I let snowflakes melt like frosting on my tongue—I hold his shaky hand while he wheezes, “Look. At me! Look at. Me!” His whole world is this wonder, a yard full of untouched snow, no memory that it ever has or ever might melt away.

*

Someone left a note on my bedside table saying we’re having Easter brunch today—they even made it look like my handwriting, so that I’d have to believe it. While I’m waiting, I drink in the full sunrise from my room, letting the light weigh me down into my recliner, massaging knots from my muscles with its rich red rays. The fact that it’s Easter makes the sunrise even more special than usual, even though I’m only religious some days, and on others, I’m just content living.

Everyone comes to brunch at once: residents, nurses, people wearing visitor stickers on their shirts, the community cat weaving between everyone’s ankles under the tables. Victoria gets her usual pancakes; I order scrambled eggs and Jell-O salad, because the beautiful thing about brunch is, there are no rules. The guests talk and laugh, and everyone eats maybe too much, and when “Rockin’ Robin” comes on the overhead speakers, the handsome man who always sits at the bar starts shimmying in his wheelchair, rolling his shoulders and flapping his elbows like he’s swing dancing. I sneak a picture when he’s not looking. He must’ve been a real charmer, back in his day.

The chefs come by, carrying platters thatched with cookies decorated like Easter eggs. The woman sitting across from me stares down at the powder-blue zigzags on hers. “Cookies,” she says, so soft that it sounds like someone talking in their sleep.

“My mom makes the best cookies,” I say. “Sometime, you’ll have to come over and meet—”

But my mom is dead.

The thought hits like a barbed whip: sharp impact, slow drag. Of course my mom is dead. She’s been dead since … a long time ago. Since before I moved here. Even though I’m suddenly not sure how long that’s been, or where here really is, only that I am here, tucked away like leftovers that someone forgot about in their freezer, and always meant to come back for but never did.

*

All these faceless doors look the same and none of them look like mine. The dim hallways keep contorting into infinity loops while I’m not paying attention. I must’ve been lost for days, but the lights overhead never get any darker, or brighter, until finally someone appears and asks if I need help and I say yes please please yes I’m lost and I can’t find my way home, and she smiles, and lifts the camera from my clenched fingers, and turns and points to one of the doors—

—and wham, it transforms into my door even as I’m looking at it, like her finger is a magic wand. I realize that’s where I’m living now: a world of dark magic, of curses that nobody knows how to cure, where imagination and reality bleed together and time gets all leaky. And in that moment of clarity, I realize that this isn’t my room at all: it’s the room of whoever died here before I moved in, and the room of whoever will replace me when I do the same. They’ll thrust open the windows to let out my ghost, sanitize my essence from the recliner, wipe away my memory fogging up the mirror, and just like magic, I’ll vanish.

*

I must not have been sleeping well recently, because I don’t wake up this morning until breakfast. At breakfast. I just open my eyes, and there I am, with my scrambled eggs and orange juice shining before me, and nothing but an empty black dreamspace behind. I guess my nurse must’ve rolled me out in a wheelchair, though I’m not sure how she put me into the wheelchair without waking me up, or lifted me from wheelchair to chair-chair, or slung the camera over my neck and wrapped my fingers around the buttons.

I blink a few times, just getting my bearings. There’s someone sitting beside me. I smile and say, “Good morning…!”

And then I stop. I can’t remember her name. Veronica? Victoria? Belinda? Brianna? Susanna? Sasha? Tasha? Tera? Vera? Veronica?

“I’m so sorry,” I say. I make it most of the way to a laugh, in the way that a stunt rider might make it most of the way to their landing ramp. “I forgot your name!”

But the lady across from me doesn’t seem to know, either. She shrugs deeper into her shawl, staring at her plate with wide, startled eyes. I start breathing faster, faster than I can control.

That’s when the syrup smell hits me. Her name, Victoria’s name, snaps into place, and it feels like waking up for the first time in months, like opening the curtains after a thunderstorm and getting a faceful of fresh sunshine. “Victoria!” I say.

Victoria blinks up at me, like her name is a language that she doesn’t understand, and my face is a puzzle missing too many pieces.

*

One of the nurses has brought me cake! For breakfast! I spend forever trying to turn on my camera, until the nurse points out the big fat button screaming ON/OFF in my face. I can’t remember her name, but I’d know her face anywhere, the cheeks rounding out her smile, the pink streak in her hair. She sits with me in the dining room, passing out cake slices, to me, the lady with the cozy shawl, the old grouch over at the bar. I tell her that she should have some, too, but she only shakes her head and says she’s fine with her coffee. With how tired her eyes look, I’m not sure that it’s helping.

Afterwards, she tells the other nurses that she’ll help me wash up. “I owe her that much,” she says to them.

I lay my hand over hers on my wheelchair’s push handle. “You don’t owe me anything.”

My nurse smiles a little twist of a smile. “That’s just the cake talking.”

Back in my room, she fluffs my hair, freshens up my lipstick, frosts my toothbrush with toothpaste and sprinkles it with water. While I brush, she does a double-take at the calendar, flips the month over to June, and starts checking off boxes. I knew it didn’t feel like February anymore! On the day that must be today, she draws a cake with candles on it, and circles all of that in a heart. I laugh and ask what that’s for.

She takes the toothbrush from my mouth. “Your birthday.” She points up at the streamers fluttering in the air vents’ gentle sigh. “Didn’t you notice your decorations?”

The bathroom tiles tilt beneath me. I’d thought those decorations must’ve always been there. I can’t imagine what the room would look like without them.

“Did anyone come to visit?” I hear myself ask.

The nurse’s smile is a deep shade of melancholy. She wipes the toothpaste off my chin. “Only me.”

My whole face feels numb. I’m not sure who I’d been expecting. I can’t remember why I even asked. “It feels like every day is my birthday,” I say, trying to explain myself, but it’s just as confusing to hear as it is to experience.

But then the nurse chuckles, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” and I realize what she means and start giggling, too, and before I know it, we’re both laughing so hard that she has to sit down on the recliner beside me, and I lean into her, and she wraps me in a hug, like I myself am the present, and this day is the gift.

*

An overcast sky plasters over the dining-room windows, spattered with silhouettes of flying geese. I spend too long leaning on my walker in the doorway, trying to figure out whether they’re flying south for winter or north for summer, if the windows face the sunrise, and the sun rises in the east, and the geese are flying right to left across the windows. But the thoughts are loose as the last wisps on a cotton-candy cone, and the more I lick at them, the more their ends melt away.

I sit down at the empty table that feels most right, for reasons that I can’t really explain, just like I can’t explain why it also feels, somehow, sort of wrong. The whole dining room seems subdued this morning. Nobody is talking over the weepy piano music coming from the speakers. The chef behind the buffet stares down at the griddle, stacking pancakes like a burial mound. Out in the hallway, a few nurses are carrying cardboard boxes from a room in a somber procession, a shawl trailing along on the carpet behind them.

A nurse with a greasy black ponytail materializes behind the empty chair across from me. I say, “Hi,” even though it’s startling, almost disturbing, how he appeared there in the sliver of darkness between the start and end of a blink.

He grips the seatback like he’s afraid it might run off. “How are,” he asks, then tries again. At some point, he went from behind the chair to in it. “How are you holding up?”

It’s a strange way to say hello. Then again, his eyes are all red and puffy, like maybe he didn’t slept well last night, or hasn’t in a while. “Okay, I guess,” I say. “Is something wrong?”

He disappears as quickly as he arrived. I feel like he might’ve said something, but it’s already gone—like when someone tells you their name, but it slips into the blackness between the cracks in your brain. I stare down at the liquid sunshine in my glass, frame it in my camera’s viewfinder, trying to find what comfort in it I can. A song trickles out of me: goooood mor-ning, good mor-ning, to y—

“Shut up!” yells some grouch in a wheelchair at the bar. “Shut. Up. Sick of hearing that. Same. Same song. Every freaking day.”

But that doesn’t make any sense. I was just making up the song while I went. He must be really confused. They say that happens, with stress, or change. What’s harder on us than anything, though, is feeling alone.

*

Someone keeps playing a sick joke on me, turning on my faucet while I’m asleep until the water floods the room and soaks my fuzzy socks and my camera crashes off the counter like a life raft over a waterfall, and the night nurse has to come turn it off and clean things up, and the whole time she tells me that I must’ve forgotten I’d turned it on but I didn’t I would remember I have to remember I can’t not remember this whole thing has to be some sick joke.

*

I wake up already halfway into a wheelchair. The nurse settles me in with a soft grunt and tucks a blanket around my legs. It’s so early that all the lights are still dimmed in the hallways, and the night nurses are still brewing their mid-shift hot chocolates in the kitchen, and the cat is sound asleep on the front desk when we roll past.

The air outside smells like sleepless summer-vacation nights. It perks me up in an instant. I twist around and look up at the nurse. “Are we sneaking out?”

The nurse just shakes her head, her cheeks weary and slack. “We’re going to a doctor’s appointment. Specialist. Out of town.”

She helps me transfer into her car’s passenger seat, folds up my wheelchair, and tucks it into the back. I can’t remember the last time I went for a night drive. There’s something invigorating about the wide-eyed electric signs, the empty parks and neighborhoods begging to be explored, the hush that turns cities into empty cathedrals. The rear-view mirror captures the whole sunrise, an explosion in slow motion, closer than it appears. I lift the camera around my neck for a picture, but the buttons look all jumbly, so I ask the nurse to take one for me when we stop. What a great memory this will be, I think.

Then the appointment happens.

The hospital staff leads us into a windowless exam room where the fluorescent lights shine mind-wipingly white. They put me through tests, assessments, questionnaires. Some of them are really difficult. Others are so tricky they’re almost mean. It feels like the worst game show ever, no prizes, or music, or fun, just an audience that never applauds for right answers but makes worried faces for every wrong one. The woman who came with me makes that face a lot.

When the doctor finally comes in, he slings himself onto the rolling stool and asks how things have been. I start telling him that things are okay, but whoever this is who came with me interrupts and says, “They told me she’s having more bad nights. More confusion. Nightmares, too.”

The doctor says hm-hm-yes, like he’s trying to be compassionate, and can’t believe how long that takes to do. He starts flinging words over my head, and this stranger beside me starts tossing them back, asking about my mood and my coordination and my thinking and this gibberish of medications, memapezildomentineprimosinprazidone, while I just stare, feeling totally lost even in a room that has only one exit, this body that has none at all.

Then the man in the white coat whirls on me. He asks if I know who I am.

I tell him my name.

He asks if I know where I am.

I struggle until seeing his stethoscope, and I say yes, I’m in a doctor’s office.

He asks if I know what day it is.

I say … well, I say no, actually, just that it’s the day for my doctor’s appointment, because I’ve been so distracted with all the tests and questions and wondering when I’ll ever get out of here that I haven’t really thought about it.

He smirks a little bit at that, and flicks the tip of his pen toward the woman beside me. “Do you know who this is?”

The question slopes down at the end, like he already knows what the answer will be. I stare for longer than is really polite at this woman, her pink streak of hair, her pleading eyes, her cheeks straining to hold up a smile—and finally, something sparks in my head. I clap my hands, because this one I’ve got, this one I do know. “Of course!” I say. “It’s my nurse.”

The nurse’s eyes get all tight. She looks down at her empty coffee cup. The white-coat man scribbles something on his clipboard. I don’t know what I said, only that it was wrong, somehow, and that makes me feel like a leaky black trash bag.

The man slams the head of his pen against his clipboard. “Well. She’s progressing much faster than expected.”

I pull my face back. It’s such a kind compliment, so unexpected, so needed, that a warm weepiness froths up in my chest. Sometimes I feel like I’m not progressing at all, just getting stuck every day on the same word searches, the same puzzles, the same page of the same coloring book.

But he isn’t done talking. He goes on to say things like, “disease processes,” and “prognosis,” and “expectation management.” He tells my nurse about medications, and side effects, and treating, not curing. He says that she’s done everything right, that these things just happen, that what’s important now is keeping me comfortable (even though he’s making me so uncomfortable right now, and very, very scared).

Finally, he asks if there’s anything else he can do for us. My nurse looks wrung-out, like she’s been crying—not that morning specifically, or even that week, but over the course of months and years. I take her hand and try to smile. Her face crumples like a used tissue. “I just want her to be normal again.”

The whole drive back, I don’t say a thing.

*

I cannot sleep I will not sleep if I drop my focus for even a second someone will steal my body and start walking around in my skin and taking pictures with my camera and pretending to be me, the real me, the me who’s been kept asleep and trapped in the dark for decades, but now now now I’m finally awake I can think I do remember I am the real me, and now that I’ve taken my mind back I cannot will not let it go.

*

You learn, as you get older, and sicker, that there are good days and bad days.

Today has not been a good day.

It was looking like it’d be a perfect sunrise this morning: clouds hanging low on the horizon, the trees and grass shivering in a thin sheet of frost. As I put the picture I’d taken into my dresser, though, I found this fossilized Easter cookie, a can of real soda, a coloring book already filled in and all these old pictures arranged underneath. I decided to look through them. I’d never done that before.

It was not a good idea.

A nurse appears in the doorway right before sunrise. She asks how I’m doing. I shake my head, looking down at the timestamped pictures, floating in the chilly horror of seeing someone else’s smile on my own face. “Cold,” I answer.

Suddenly, she’s beside me, snugging a blanket around my legs, her paper coffee cup on the sink behind her. Her hair spills over her face, the pink streak like sunbeams piercing a clouded horizon.

I start to say, “I’ve never seen hair like that before,” but then I wonder how many other times I’ve said that and forgotten and said it again, and if I might’ve already done that just now, and all the words dissolve on my tongue and run back down my throat and choke me up.

She asks if I know who I am, and I say my name, and she asks where I am, and I say I’m with you, and she asks if I know what day it is, and then I get the whole-body shakes because I don’t know what day it is or how long I’ve been here and the more I think about it the more it feels like I’ve only lived this one terrifying day and that day is and will be my forever.

Then the nurse’s arm is around me, and fuzzy socks have swallowed my feet, and there’s a hot chocolate already growing cold in my hands. When did she give it to me? When could she have left to make it? And how is she already at the door again, her back to me, her hand on the light switch? I only blinked once. I swear I only blinked once! Before she can disappear, before I can forget that she was ever here, I shout, “Wait!”

She freezes in the doorway, like she’s heard a voice from an empty room.

“I don’t want to stay here,” I say. Has my voice always sounded so thin? “Not alone.”

Her shoulders sag. She turns around. I fixate on her every step across the linoleum floor, every crease in her shirt when sits on the side of my bed, as if gripping the moment’s details hard enough might keep it from slipping away. She takes my hand. “Do you know why you’re here?”

I know that I should. I know that I did. But remembering feels like trying to catch a shaft of sunlight in my spread-open fingers. “I know I have trouble remembering things. Even though I can’t remember when that started.” And isn’t that ironic. Isn’t that funny. Isn’t that just a god … damned … joke. “I know that this thing I’m living with, it’s like a photo album where someone tampers with every picture you’ve taken. Slowly, to start off. Just blurring the details they think you won’t miss. But before long, you start losing whole pictures, and you try taking more but they keep disappearing even faster, until all you are is nothing more than a sheet, a single picture, a face, an outline. And I know that I’m scared, because whenever I’ve imagined dying, I’ve always imagined it like … like … I don’t know what. Not like this, dying by degeneration, by…”

The nurse takes a deep breath. “Dementia.”

It’s the sound of a crack shooting through a frozen lake underfoot, de-men-tia. It’s the feeling of spiders scurrying up your spine. It’s the shock of moving into a house with a vampire portrait, sleeping with it in your bedroom for years, only to wake up one night and find the frame empty, and realize what you’d thought was a painting is a window that’s now open.

“You once told me,” says the lady beside me, “that it feels like every day is your birthday. Maybe that’s what it’ll be like. It won’t feel like your life ending. It’ll just be beginning. You’ll shut your eyes, and that last image will be your first, all you know, all you’ve ever known, your whole life.”

I force a breath into my chest, still ratcheting tighter. “I hope mine is a sunrise.”

I’m not sure why I say this out loud. My room is empty. The sun hovers well over the horizon. But the phantom imprint of someone’s kiss weighs on my forehead like a cast shadow, its outline soothing, and somehow familiar.

*

My hip is broken.

You’d think I’d remember something like that happening, but I don’t, really. There’s no way to say for certain whether it did hurt or will heal, only is broken, passive voice, present tense, the time frame that’s become my whole life. IVs are jabbed into the backs of my hands. Meals are brought in and taken away. I am flipped from my left side onto my right, so that I’m either facing the windows or my reflection in the mirror over the sink, while the words functional decline are repeated all around me.

This time, I’m left facing the window. The sky sucks up the last drips of colors from the sunset on the other horizon. My tummy growls, buried beneath all the blankets and hip padding, but I also have a feeling that I might’ve already eaten, even though I don’t remember it. The thought makes my tummy snarl and start gnawing on itself, as if that will do anything other than make this a very, very long night.

Someone knocks on the doorway. A lady walks around to the foot of my bed, so that I can barely see her, past my fuzzy socks, if I crank my neck as far as it goes.

She’s crying.

I reach out a hand, and she comes closer and takes it. She keeps saying that she’s sorry, that she never thought something like this would happen, that she should’ve come to see me more often.

I don’t really know whether that’s true or not, but seeing this woman cry fills me with a soul-cracking sadness, releasing some old instinct from deep inside: I rub her back, and hum some wordless song that goes, hmmmmmm hmm-hmmm, hmmm hmm-hmmm, hm hmmmmm.

When her shoulders finally stop bucking, I ask, “What’s wrong?”

“My mom,” she whispers. “She’s…”

She doesn’t have to finish answering. Only three things could make someone sob like that: will die, is dying, has died.

“Tell me about. About her,” I say. “Your mom.”

She shakes her head against my chest. “She has this … this stupid obsession with old cameras,” she begins, “and she spent all year sunburnt because she’d sit on the porch watching sunrises from start to finish, and she used to try so hard to be a part of my life that I always blocked her out of it. And I love her. And I miss her. And I never said that enough.”

I say the only thing that I can. “I’m sure she. She knew. Anyway.”

She sniffs with a sound like torn velvet. I reach for the tissue box on my bedside table, but instead, my hand comes back with a camera. A smile trembles onto the woman’s cheeks. The next thing I know, the camera is lifted in her hand for a picture, my arm lifted to wave, the back of my hand stained purple from forgotten hurts.

*

I’ve started getting meals in bed, this thick honey-adjacent that only tastes sweet by process of elimination, like it’s made by bees wearing ties and short-sleeved collared shirts who’ve only seen flowers in the pictures hanging in their cubicles. The lady feeding me says she made sure to get the orange flavor, but even that only tastes like the pith.

She keeps shoveling one spoonful of nectar after another into my mouth, her bloodshot eyes half-lidded, so she never really has to blink. I twitch my limp hand. She jerks back, as if waking from a half sleep. I swallow, and keep swallowing, until I can say, “Love…”

The woman fumbles for the camera around her neck. But something more than goop gums up my tongue, my mind, the delicate clockwork connecting them both.

“Love,” I try again. “Love you.” Because I do love this stranger, for this simple act of care, and no matter how many times I might’ve forgotten to say it, I can’t imagine it ever not being true.

Then she’s hugging me, and I’m hugging her, each of us a child clinging to its mother.

*

I think today might be my birthday. Flowers around my bed. People crowded between them. A woman holding my hand in hers. She starts to raise a camera, but then looks behind her, pulls open the curtains.

The colors outside take my breath away—the brightness makes my eyes squint, then flutter, then shut.

I’ve never seen such a beautiful sunrise.

E.M. Dasche is the penname of a scientist, medical interpreter, and award-winning writer based in the United States. They published their first novella, a superhero storybook for adults titled Fill, in 2024.

The Reach

Apr 8, 2025

“Falling Star,” oil on canvas, by Witold Pruszkowski, 1884.

I failed out of university. Biochemistry. It sounded mystical, something I could tell my relatives, but it didn’t work. Ended up painting decks in the sunshine. Got a hell of a tan. Spent the nights drinking and smoking. Wandering around the streets trying to figure out why I had so much potential.

Alisha is a widower on the next block who slept with me when I was sixteen. At the time, she was blond, long legs. Now she wears a lot of makeup, and as much time as she spends with me, she’s never slept with me again. I think she’s guilty about what she did, but she never talks about it.

“You have so much potential,” Alisha tells me, beer in hand, on a porch that I painted. “Young boys are essential.”

There are stars, and there are stars. Tonight is brilliantly clear, no moon. I trace the Milky Way with my finger. Alisha gets me another beer. I ask her, “Why don’t you get married again?”

“Is that the best use of my time?” she asks. “Why don’t you go back to school? Or get a better job? Or get married and have kids?”

“We could do bigger things,” I agree, but I don’t really know what that means.

“Pick a star,” she says, pointing. “And just follow it.”

The next day, I’m at the mall. There’s a man in front of a felt display, near the bottom of an escalator. He’s on a two-foot stage. Above him, in glittering letters, ‘Join the Reach.’

Young men and women are sitting on plastic chairs as a television screen on the stage comes alive. There are blurry images from a telescope, identifying a single bright dot—a star. A deep voice says that around the star, there’s a planet called Thear.

“The Reach for Thear,” says the man on the stage, “will be the most significant endeavor in the history of the human species. We are going to send a person to this planet. It will take more than a thousand years. This person will sleep for much of it, but when they awake, they will be on this planet, the first human to reach a new world.”

The screen changes to an image of the planet, a scientist’s idea of what could be there. Everything is purple. Waves move through the thick air. The trees are as big as mountains; the mountains are no bigger than trees.

I put up my hand. I don’t remember the question I asked.

*

Alisha and I go to visit her husband’s grave. I never knew him. He died when I was ten, and she said she drank herself into a stupor until near the time she met me, and took me to her bed.

“Bill, this is my friend Ishin. You never met him. He sits on the porch and drinks beer with me. We play cards. I’ve met his parents, they’re nice but are moving to New Mexico to retire. I just wanted you to know him.”

“Hi, Bill,” I say to the headstone. There’s a tree nearby. Branches are leaning over.

She tells Bill about her job. The mortgage that will be paid off soon. Her study of butterflies, some theory that butterflies can live without oxygen and can tolerate very cold temperatures. Even deep space. When she’s done, she puts whole peanuts on the grass next to the headstone to feed the squirrels.

On the drive home, I tell her about Thear. “It’s the closest inhabitable planet we’ve found. Took the newest space telescope to find it. I’m applying to be on the mission.”

“Maybe we could go together,” she says. “There’s nothing happening on this planet.”

“It’s only for one person. The ship is only big enough for one person. People are applying. There’s a lot of interest, but they’re looking for the right candidate. Someone who can stand a thousand years of sleeping.”

“Alone?” she asks.

“Alone. They hope the person can get to Thear and send back a signal that it’s a good planet, one where we can go.”

The next street over, there’s a garbage dump. On some days, the gases waft over Alisha’s house and continue to the mall, where the filters shut it out, but what a smell it makes in the parking lot. Today, the air is heavy, and it lands on the house. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We drink beer, and talk about travelling through space.

When it’s time for me to go, Alisha tells me, “You won’t be the one.”

“How do you know that?”

Alisha doesn’t smile often. Her teeth are crooked, but otherwise she’s so pretty. It’s not exactly a smile on her face, but it’s close. “I need my beer buddy.”

There’s ten empties on the patio table. A pool of water where the condensate has gathered. All the while, the smell falls on us, so thick we know it can’t exist.

*

In the park with the crumpled baseball backstop, there is a rumour of grass in the dead dirt of the field. One brick wall, ten feet long and seven feet high, stands along a foul line. It serves no purpose. Perhaps it never served any purpose.

On that wall, I paint. This isn’t my strength. I’m not creative in that way. I can paint a porch in the sunshine until I’m tanned. That is the easy work. The small stuff. But on this brick wall, I paint stars. In the middle, there is a planet, and on that planet, there are creatures swimming in the oceans, and climbing the big trees. Blow-ups of the land and water are presented in hovering circles around the planet, like they’re angels watching Thear.

“Take my picture,” I ask Alisha, when I’m done.

I stand in front of the mural, wondering if this will be the moment that the wall falls down. Alisha takes the photo. She’s in the sunshine, in her small black shorts. I’m in the shadows, wondering if this photo will be enough to get the attention of the Selection Committee.

She gives me back my camera. “I want to add something.”

“You paint?”

“Not paint. Words. I make up words sometimes. New words for things that we know. Watch.”

She takes white paint and scrawls a word in the bottom right corner, ‘ubexum’. Then again in the bottom left corner, bigger letters: ‘ubexum.’

“What’s it mean?” I ask.

“Later,” she says. “Stand there again, I want to take another picture.”

This time, the setting sun has reached the bottom of the wall. Alisha’s words are lit up, like they’re the foundation of the planet floating above. I’m standing in the middle, my hands up, reaching for Thear and the stars around it.

Back at Alisha’s place, she prints the photo. “Keep it with you. There’s no way you’re going to be picked, but just in case … you should have this.”

We drink beer. We play cards. We watch TV, but it’s hopeless today: bullets, bludgeons, and politics, that’s all. More beer! cries Alisha, so we drink, and I think about how young I am, how indispensable. On the porch, we hop down the stairs under the stars, as cars growl on the broken asphalt and a weed pops through the cracked driveway, looking for water.

“What’s it mean?” I ask Alisha, as we dance on the topsy-turvy sidewalk.

“Ubexum?” We’re dancing so hard, under the stars, the biggest thing we know to do, a twenty-year-old kid and a fifty-three-year-old widow. She stares at me, “Do you want to sleep with me again? You never ask.”

“I thought we didn’t talk about that.”

“I’d say no, anyway,” she returns. “Back then, I was a drunk. Bill was dead. Industrial poisoning, you know. Exposure to lithium for years on end polluted him from the inside out. You could see the lithium at the end. Big bulbs on his skin, yellow. He would pop them, and this stuff would come out, half metal, half him. He choked on the stuff, and died. And I got drunk. And then I met you.” A smile as she dances with her arms in the air. “I wouldn’t sleep with you now. And ubexum? That means friends. Friends. It sounds better. Sounds warmer, like being friends is meant to be. Like me and you. Friends who dance like this. Ubexum sounds better. It sounds like it actually is.”

As I dance, I think to myself yes, maybe this is how it should be. The best it can be. That night, I sleep on Alisha’s couch, and wake up full of hope and potential. Two months later, I get a note that I’ve been selected for the longlist to go to Thear. Three months after that, I make the shortlist, and undergo all the physical, psychological, and emotional tests. Alisha tells me there’s still no way that I’ll go, because we’re ubexum. But she’s wrong. A year after I apply, I’m chosen, and go away to start my training.

*

They give me a new wardrobe. Bring me food for every meal and snack. Tell me when to exercise, so that I can get strong for the trip. In the evenings, I take off my shirt and look at muscles I never had before. I talk to people about what I’m going to do, about the Reach for Thear. They’re all so interested.

My parents call me once a week. They’re so proud. They never thought they’d be this proud. When Alisha calls, it’s usually after a few drinks. “I’m popular now,” she says. “They interview me, and I tell them about what we used to do together.”

“Everything?” I ask her.

“Just the beer. And the cards. I make money off of knowing you.”

“I’m a job?”

“You’re my job,” she says. “I never thought I’d have a job like you. Doing okay with the training?”

“It’s serious. I don’t like it.”

“No one likes getting ready for something. People want to do the thing. What you’re doing is big.”

“Is it?”

“The biggest thing anyone could imagine. They’re going to talk about your name for hundreds of years. People who don’t even know you, aren’t even born yet, are going to know your name. They’re going to look up and wonder where you are. If you’re getting closer, if you’re okay. That’s big.”

“I don’t know what I’ll dream about in all that sleep. They tell me they’re not sure what my brain will do. No even knows if I’ll make it out of the solar system.”

“You have to,” she says, serious.

“You’re going to miss me,” I joke, and that makes her cry, the first time I’ve heard her cry. She says more to me, but it’s mumbled. I wonder what she looks like right now. What she’s seeing. When last she danced.

*

The day of the launch, I’m in a suit. They tell me it’s one of the most expensive suits anyone could get, donated by a store in London. As I face the cameras, they tell the press that I don’t need a spacesuit. It’s not that kind of spaceship. I’m not an astronaut. I’m just a human being, the first one who will go to another inhabitable planet.

On the way out, I have a guard of people. There’s a set of benches along the causeway to the rocket. My parents are there, and give me a hug. They’ve brought relatives, people I barely know. I invited a few friends from high school, that’s all.

Alisha’s in a white dress, beautiful. She puts her arms around me. “You look so good. Friends?”

“Friends,” I tell her. I pull out the photograph of me against the wall, so that she knows it’s coming with me.

“Make sure you write,” she says.

“Do you have any new words for things?”

She touches my cheek. “Loads. A whole new language. You wouldn’t even understand it. If I had time, I’d teach you.”

“I have a lot of time coming. A lot.”

“Go on,” she says, with a smile. “Do something. For us.”

Then they’re pulling me away. I look back at her, all white against the others in the stands. She has a badge around her neck. I know it’s the last time I’m going to see her.

At the bottom of the rocket, I feel small. But I’m doing something big. Everyone knows it. People around the world know my name.

“Ready?” comes a voice in my ear.

I put my hand up, and reach for the blue sky. Hard as I can.

*

The clamps holding the ship release. The voice in my ear tells me that the crowds are going crazy with cheering. I am a young guy, I tell the little window looking out onto the world. Just a young guy, and here I come. The rocket shudders. At first, there’s no movement, like this isn’t going to work, but then I rise. After that, I sprint.

“Are you okay?” comes a voice in my ear.

“Holy cow,” I say. It’s not poetic, but young men are not poets.

The sky is blue, even up here. The window is so small in the launch module, but I can see forever. The blue fades to grey, then black. Then space. A camera shows me what’s behind: just a single planet in a universe full of them, a world of blues and whites. A world that we grew up on, and tried hard to destroy, but then came this: the hope of going further, faster, to the next adventure.

More acceleration. When it’s time, I enter the spaceship itself, and listen to the shudder as it detaches from the rocket. I’m still in my suit. The tie is tight against my neck, so I take it off. The front window of the ship is large. It shows me stars.

*

I watch myself pass the moon. People on the planet congratulate me for having gone further than anyone ever. They throw a party. In my tube, about the size of a small bus, I unwrap a cupcake that has been waiting for this moment. Eat it as the moon recedes into the background.

I get emails from so many people. I can’t respond to them all, but I try. I send photos back, of what I’m seeing. I confess that I took off the tie, then the suit. I have a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, so much more comfortable. The t-shirt is of a snowstorm in a desert, flakes landing on a palm tree. The water in the oasis is frozen.

The camera screen shows Earth getting smaller as I keep going. Days pass. I eat the packaged food, use the packaged bathroom. I type my emails.

“You still alive?” Alisha asks. The connection is fine, like she’s in the house next door.

“It’s not like someone is going to shoot me up here. I’m not going to catch a disease. Or get hit by a car. It’s the safest place in the universe.”

“Only a thousand years to go,” she says. “Isn’t it typical? I make a good friend, and next thing I know, he’s shot into space. It seems unfair.”

“I’ll never have a girlfriend,” I tell her. “Never go to Costa Rica. Or have a baby.”

“You’ll never have a friend again,” she continues. “Or get a degree. Or retire. You’re never going to retire, and wonder about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.”

“They didn’t even send any beer up.” That makes her laugh. “I’m going to sleep tomorrow.”

“The long sleep?”

“Twenty-two years.”

“I’ll be almost eighty by then. Don’t forget to call when you wake up.”

I can’t respond to that. She stays silent, too. When I’m ready, I tell her about the stars I’m seeing. The bright ones, the big ones, the patches of haze in-between. When she hangs up, I go to the curved glass at the front of the ship and put my hands on the coolness.

*

It takes twenty-two years to fly out of the solar system, but that’s only the start of the journey. By the time the Earth is small, a voice whispers, “It’s time to sleep.”

“Already? I don’t mind staying up longer. More books to read. Lots of messages to reply to.”

“They’ll wait. You need rest. Have a good night.”

At the front of the ship, the photo that Alisha took of me next to that wall is encased in glass. I still look like that. It hasn’t been that long.

I lie in the cubby at the back of the ship. It looks like a funeral casket. Closes with a snap, and then a whir of air. The lights in the surface wink off, one-by-one, simulating nightfall. I can smell gas. It’s green, faint. “Good night,” I tell everyone. They can hear me, because the microphones are always on. They’ll listen to me when I sleep. If they ever want to know how I’m doing, all people have to do is access the feed, and hear my breathing. They won’t know what I’m dreaming. But they’ll know I’m here.

The lights wink out. I’m a young guy. There’s a lot to dream.

*

There is a volcano at the top pole of a moon that spins around Jupiter. It blows up. Too much heat. Too much energy. It’s a geyser reaching for the stars. Looks like an eruption of paint, colouring the sky. A few drops escape the gravity of the moon. Spin out into space, dispersed. Starting a journey. Or, more correctly, starting another one.

A single drop flies towards a solitary ship travelling towards the edge of the solar system. It lands on the hull, splatters there. Starts off a fiery red. Settles as an orange. Glimmers in the sunshine. Freezes in the cold.

*

Waking up after twenty-two years is not as hard as it sounds. I groan as I leave the casket. Someone thought to put a corkboard in my vessel, and on it that old note: ‘Join the Reach.’ My eyes blur as I try to read.

Through the window, there’s only blackness. Neptune is behind me. Gone. This is interstellar space, the edge of everything we know.

I have thirty million messages. Three hundred thousand in the last year. I sort them, look for my family. A picture of my dad comes on the screen. He died five years ago. My mom is at the funeral. My brother is holding a photo of me, and behind them is a long line of military people, saluting. My dad wasn’t a hero. He was just a farmer. Loved the land, the soil. Sold the farm to live in a condo in New Mexico.

I eat. Sift through messages. I have two nephews now, they’re in university. Friends have sent me messages almost every month for the last twenty-two years, explaining what’s happening with their lives. Hoping that I’m well. Telling me that they miss having me around.

I type messages back. They’ll take four hours to get home. I have fourteen days of awake time coming to me before the next long sleep. I stare at space, and wait for responses.

Then I open Alisha’s messages. There’s so many of them. There are photos of her on her porch. At Bill’s gravestone. There’s a video of her dancing in the street, so happy, a beer bottle in her hand. She tells me she met a man. Then she tells me she married him. Yuan-Ye is his name. I see his photo, and he looks so young, but she says he’s near her age. There’s a wedding in front of a waterfall. Alisha’s in white again, her favorite colour. Later, a joke about maybe having a baby. Vacations they take around the world, like they’re pressed to get to every country they possibly can.

She sells her house. Moves to Costa Rica and lives on the coast with Yuan-Ye. They pick fruit from the trees and send me an audio file with the cries of howler monkeys. I miss you, she tells me, over and over again. She drinks beer with her husband, but it’s not the same. She hasn’t told him yet what she did to me when I was sixteen, but she will. Says she goes back to visit Bill once a year, but he’s poor company.

Then the messages stop. I send her notes. It takes time, when you’re this far from Earth. But there’s no response.

Finally, I find a message from a Yuan-Ye. Yuan-Ye Chung. He regrets to inform me that Alisha passed away two years ago. Natural causes. She died in Costa Rica, and is buried there. There’s a photo of her grave, between the trees, in front of a red bush. She died happy, says Yuan-Ye. She said she missed her friend in the stars, and hoped that he was doing well. She said that she would like to see her friend again, someday, some way.

I write him back, drafts I end up erasing. It seems like yesterday that I saw her in her white dress at the launch. Just a few months since I had a drink with her, and we danced.

I’m awake for two weeks. It’s warm in the ship. Cold everywhere else.

*

I’m a tree. In 2050, I’m a sapling. Birds land on me. Occasionally, they shit on my feet. A drought almost kills me when I’m thirteen. A forest fire nearly incinerates me when I’m forty-two. But you have to remember that I don’t need much. Sunlight. Water. Soil. These are the simple things, and they never abandon you.

We the trees are resilient. We’ve survived almost everything on this planet. We’ll keep surviving, as life around us changes, and the stars shift in the big sky.

By the time I’m fifty, I’m in the backyard of a big house. There are roads everywhere, neat and tidy. Children play in me. Once, one of them falls down and lands on my roots. She’s a little girl, writhing in pain, screaming. She’s bleeding. People are running from the house. My leaves shake. My breath burns. The next time I see her, she’s in a cast. She grows up under me, becomes a woman, her back against me as she plays with her hair. But I most remember the little girl and her screams.

By the time I’m a hundred, the house is gone. All the houses are gone, taken away and given back to the forest. We the trees grow fast, if we’re allowed. The forest spreads over the land again, like it used to be. The people have all moved, and realized that it’s better to go up rather than out. In the distance, towers rise, far taller than I will ever be. One scrapes against the clouds. Little ships sail above.

One hundred and twenty is my year, though. That is the year that a couple comes to me, and looks up through my branches at the blue sky. These people stay with me into the night. Huddled close together, breathing. Observing the stars, the same way I do. Existing, just like I do. Let’s just be, I say to them, shaking my branches.

In the morning, they carve their names in my trunk. It hurts, but not much. They trace the incisions with their fingers, and when they’re done, they thank me. They thank me, a tree that’s been here for so long, as those towers grew in the distance.

*

A hundred years later, I’m awake. In the camera, you can’t see the solar system. It’s just background. I’m sure that one of the dots out there is the sun, but I don’t know which one.

I look in a mirror, and there I am, a young man. Indispensable, if you read the newspapers. I have stubble on my face, but not much.

“Good morning!” proclaims the computer. “We haven’t forgotten about you! Everyone’s been looking forward to this wake-up sequence. Let us tell you what’s happened on Earth while you’ve been asleep.”

Images flash across the screen. “My God,” I whisper. “That is so amazing. You guys are doing so well. I never imagined this stuff…”

I deliver a message into space. It will take months for it to get home, but it’s nice to know that people are thinking about me. I have messages, mostly from around the time when I went to sleep. It takes about a day to go through them. Then I hit a button and get the red-mail, the stuff that I’ve been warned about. People are gone, all of them. My family is dead. My friends are dead. Even my nephews are gone. But there’s a larger family now, people I don’t recognize. There’s a room full of relatives, holding up a sign wishing me well. Asking me to send them a message.

I tap on the screen, things I dreamt about saying. I wish I could know you, I tell them. I wish we could meet. Just know that I’m thinking about you. I send a message to Yuan-Ye as well, even though he’s dead. I tell him to put his arms around my friend. My ubexum. There was no loneliness until now.

I say goodbye to everyone I have known. Get used to learning new people that I never will know. I stay awake for a week, moving around the ship. Eating and drinking, checking the vessel, making sure I’m on course. In the last moments before sleep, I look out the front, peer into space. I can’t see Thear’s sun, but it’s out there. Gravity-assisted and coupled with electromagnetic drives and ionic propulsion, I have nearly nine hundred years to go. The next sleep is centuries long, but so what? I’m in the fastest human-made thing that’s ever been made. No, strike that. I’m just the fastest human that’s ever been.

*

The strangest part is the temperature of the water. The Pacific Ocean is supposed to be deep and cold, but when the waves pass over the underlying sand off the western coast of Costa Rica, the water heats up until you feel like you’re in a swimming pool.

I wade into the ocean and jump as the waves careen towards me. I’ve learned how to look for undertows, and avoid them. People say there are bull sharks in the area, but they never come. It’s been years, and I’ve never seen a bull shark. Now and then, I take a beer with me into the water, raise it above my head as the waves lift me into space.

The sun sets at six o’clock, every night. Yuan-Ye and I sit on the beach to watch the sunset, the most beautiful I’ve seen. In the winter season, the beach is closed to people, because it’s leatherback turtle season. They come out of the waves as the sun sets, and move into the grass. The police come out to make sure no one disturbs them. I think it’s ridiculous, closing the beach like that, but in time, I come to think of it as lovely. It’s just lovely, I tell Yuan-Ye.

I write emails to my friend in the stars. He’s asleep, and won’t respond for years. I wonder if I’ll be around when he wakes up. I wonder if he’ll make it, not just to the next awakening, but all the way to a new planet. I want to tell him about leatherback turtles, and that there’s still something beautiful down here. He didn’t have to go so far away to find something beautiful. Come to Costa Rica, I tell him. Turn the ship around and come back. We have a spare bedroom.

The end comes for me on my patio. It’s flagstones around a pool, water that we never have to heat. I’m lying in a chair, looking at the trees. There’s a creature in the leaves. There’s birds flying past, yellows and reds and the brightest greens. I’m not doing anything. I’m just relaxing. Everything is fine, but then it ends. Sometimes, this is just the way it ends.

I’m buried in the plot of land out back, at the edge of our property. We have a red ginger bush against the trees, and I’m right next to it. Yuan-Ye leads the vigil. We have so many friends along the beach. People we love, whose lives we know. They’ve all come to say goodbye to me, as I rest in the ground. Yuan-Ye’s final goodbye is beautiful, just like he is.

After that, I fade. It takes decades for my particles to assimilate into the earth. They scatter, dispersed into the pore spaces of the soil. I disassociate, come apart, like this is my destiny, but there’s a part of me that knows, one day, that I’ll be stardust, blown back into space. Scattering across the universe, in search of a new home. It’s the destination for all of us, the stars.

*

The straight line. This is what I travel. I have wings that sift through the minor particles that make up space. Those wings are silver. My face is cold. A straight line through the universe is a pathway that has no destination. It’s simply a direction, a movement straight ahead.

I was born when everything was. So were you. In that, we are very similar. The same age. The same vintage.

The straight line through space sees me flying towards a small metal ship. I’ve seen things like this before, out here. I alight upon it. Rest my wings and let it carry me for a while. I did not know how tired I was. Do you?

The metal is cold. The ship is old. I put my face onto it, and listen to the thrum of the energy that keeps it moving. Through the front window, I peer into darkness. Lights twinkle in there, and near the back, a box lies closed.

I rest. It’s a strange feeling, to finally rest. Together, we float, my wings around the hull of the ship. There is a faraway warmth that comes from the metal now. It feels familiar. It reminds me of something.

Time passes. We come to know each other. Help each other. When the warmth in the engines feels as though it is diminished, I let them have my strength, born as it was in a star. When the quiet is too much, we talk. Occasionally, we sing.

You are my love, perhaps. The thing that has supported my transit on this straight line from a beginning I cannot remember to an endpoint that does not exist. I am aware that beings live and rejoice around me, but not here. Not in the darkest space. Here, I have you, and you carry me onwards.

The time passes. So much of it. You ask me: what is time? I ask you: what is a question?

And then a star erupts far away, and its shockwave floats through space. It takes a long time, but I hear it approaching. Particles of heat move towards the ship. Don’t worry, I tell it. I’m here. But the assault is heavy. It’s hot. My wings wither. My face heats. The ship moves off course, rolls. We are tumbling. We are free of the straight line, and on a different path now.

For ages, we spin. I’m scared, I tell you. Don’t worry, you reply. We’ll find our way back to the path. I raise my wings. The minor particles pull, and change our course. I push with my silver, swimming through space with my love in tow. Such time passes before we are back on the line. In the distance, that erupting star has fizzled into nothingness. It’s done.

This way, I tell the ship. This is the way. And together we fly. I close my eyes. Relax my wings. Thank you for carrying me, I tell the thing. Thank you for letting me by. I fly away, back on the route that I’ve followed for all of time. Back facing the distance and the blackness, the straight line that now takes me away from you.

*

Six hundred years later, I’m awake. The computer is cold and silent. There are messages from Earth, automated signals that make sure the ship is on course. No welcomes this time. No messages from my family.

They warned me this would happen. Prepared me for it. People forget, they said. Years go by, decades that turn into centuries, what did I expect?

In the mirror, I look the same. Stubble on my face, but I’m still that young man. I walk through the ship, loosening up. Eating. It’s been six centuries since last I ate mush, or drank my own urine.

The picture of me that Alisha took is still there, but the colours are faded. It’s all browns and greys now, that young man standing against the wall. Centuries have passed since that happened. I know there is nothing left of my friend. She left no children, no family. She’s gone, except for here with me, where I think on the photo.

The stars are different. I have two weeks to study, chart them, send messages back to Earth, a place where no one may be listening. When I get to Thear, it will take almost five years for a message to get to Earth, but when it does, it will talk about what it’s like to go to a new world. It will talk about how the greatest dream ends.

The days flip by. I keep expecting a new message to appear. But nothing does. I undress, and shower. Dry myself before the stars. Stretch my arms as though they could reach that far.

I write more messages. Talk about what I’m seeing. Hope that everyone is doing well. Ask them to tell me who won the World Series the last few hundred times. Do you still play baseball? I ask. I brought a glove with me, and one ball. They’ve withered to dust in my sports bag. I shoot them into space through a hatch, my last toss.

Two weeks come to an end. I’m about to lie in my casket when a message comes up.

“Who are you?” it asks.

“I’m Ishin,” I tell it. “Who are you? Human?” I wince. Of course it’s human.

Through the front window, a ship appears. It’s a hundred times the size of mine, and lit up. “This is the Rounded Glass. Deep-space exploration ship. On the way to Thear to determine if colonization is possible. Launched eighteen years ago. ETA to Thear is three years. Who are you?”

I tell them my story. Tell them to check their computer systems for a memory of me. They do that, and find evidence of who I am. They confirm that I existed. Confirm my mission. “There are several distant relatives of yours on this ship. Let us show you some photos.” But even people don’t really look like people anymore, I find. “Your mission is acknowledged, but we have developed much faster ships since you departed. We will explore Thear and other planets, if possible. That is our mission.”

“Can I come aboard?” I ask.

Silence. Deliberation, here in the deepest part of space. “Negative. You may have infections that could spread to our people.”

“You can’t leave me here. I was supposed to explore Thear as well. Don’t you have a way to deal with germs now?”

More silence. Then: “Proceed with your mission. It is acknowledged. It is remembered. Good luck.”

And the ship flares once before leaping ahead. It’s gone in a flash, and I’m alone. Just alone.

*

“Well it’s been centuries with the same word for ‘love.’”

“What do you mean the same word for ‘love’?”

“Just that. It’s an important word, isn’t it? A meaningful one?”

“Of course.”

“Well then, shouldn’t we change it? Isn’t it about time that we evolve to the next step? I looked up how old this word is, and you wouldn’t believe it. 85 AD or so it was first mentioned. That’s more than 2600 years ago. About time for a modification. I’m prepared to seal some papers.”

“You’ll seal some papers about the word ‘love?’”

“Quite so. Could you draw them up?”

“Just like that?”

“Please do it.”

“Won’t it be confusing to people?”

“It will be more confusing if we wait longer.”

“What are we changing ‘love’ to?”

“Xnfdu.”

“Really?”

“It’s appropriate within the syntax of current speech patterns. I think it’s beautiful, myself. Very modern. ‘Love’, as we used to call it, feels dated. Slip that form over here. One quick signature, and … done! Xnfdu lives!”

“I hope this goes well.”

“If anyone doesn’t xnfdu this idea, we’ll just send them to live on Neptune. It would serve them right.”

*

Nine hundred years, and a warning wakes me up. I’m two hundred years out from Thear. I’ve been dreaming. Of so many things.

In the mirror, my hair is long. I cut it. I shave. I wash and stretch, and pin myself against the glass at the front of the ship, so that everyone can see me coming.

The warning blares. “What?” I call, unable to recognize my own voice.

A ship looms, a thousand times my size. It’s immense, and colourful. Standing in alcoves on the outside are people, waving. They are waving at me.

I wave back. “I’m Ishin!” I scream. “Ishin! Human! I’m human!”

The radio crackles. “People of Cruiseliner XF1, we have a treat for you. Please go out onto your balconies and look at the spacecraft below. This is an ancient Earth relic launched in approximately the year 2050. It has been floating towards Thear for that entire time. Please be sure to take lots of pictures. If you zoom in, you will see that the inhabitant of this ship is alive! Yes, this ancient human has been frozen for much of his sleep. On all the visits we’ve made to see this ancient ship, we have never seen the inhabitant awake! What a wonderful day!”

I strip my clothes off. Pin myself to the glass. “Ishin,” I shout. “Human.” Not a tourist attraction. Not a curiosity. Person. Human person, human being, just like you.

“Oh look, he’s waving back! I believe by his topology that he is indeed an ancient male. See how all the appendages differ in length and girth. It’s unlikely that such an ancient human could mate with a modern human, but of course we would not allow such proximity in any case.”

“Please take me aboard,” I bark into the radio. The people on the balconies just wave harder. Kids are being lifted to get a better look. Streams of something like confetti are emerging from the sides of the ship, shot into space like fireworks. Huge beams of coloured light soar out of a million holes, like this ship is a massive atom waiting to explode.

I never knew, never dreamt, that space could be so bright.

When the ship’s gone, all is dark. I look into the mirror. I’m a young man. Nearly a millennium old, but a young man. I’m also a relic. A tourist attraction.

I get into the casket. Many of the lights are defunct. The ones that work wink out, one-by-one, as though I’m in California again, drunk on the patio with Alisha, looking out at the stars mid-summer as the heat washes over me, telling me that it’s time to sleep.

*

It’s time to sleep, because you’re tired. You’re tired because you’re a tree, and now you’re a thousand years old. There are names carved into your trunk, but they’re faded. Around you, towers rise, because sooner or later, they had to move out, not just up. They’ve left you in a solitary green spot, as though you’re important. Special somehow.

You’re tired because you’re an ancient being floating through space, on a direct line to nothing and nowhere. You’ve spent your time flying, wings stretched, and for just the briefest moment, someone or something helped you along.

Or you’re tired because you’re a word that represents everything good in life. All the things we can be, the places we can go. You’re a wonderful word. But now they’ve forgotten about you, and the great literary texts of the past have been modified to include your new form, but this isn’t you at all. It’s someone else.

Maybe you’re tired because you’re gone. Because you spent time dancing under a single star, dreaming of doing something big, but not sure what that meant. Your atoms seep into the hard soil, and mingle with the darkness, waiting for a moment when the earth will split, and you’ll be released into space along with everyone and everything else.

All you know is that you’re tired, on this journey. You’ve stretched. Striven. Done everything you could. Made all the sacrifices. Considered every cost. And here you are, floating through space. Blackness in front of you. Blackness behind. And then, just like that…

A sun.

*

Alarms ring, and lights bubble excitedly. The casket is vibrating. It’s never done that before.

When it opens, there’s music. My favorite song, a blues tune. I don’t remember its name.

It takes a while to get out of the casket. My arms and legs are so skinny. I warm up some mush, eat it. Drink purified urine. Splash water on my face.

The mirror is unkind. Eleven hundred years, and I’m still a young man. Just a guy from California, 2050. Failed to get into university. Loved to swim. Had a couple of girlfriends, but never married. Argued a lot with my mom. Drank beer with my ubexum. Liked to head into the mountains on a bike, riding the trails as fast as possible. Ate sandwiches made of Wonder Bread. Smoked cigarettes in the clean, cool air.

Left it all behind to blast off into space. The first human to a new world, on the most important mission ever launched. The greatest human endeavor of all time. Making history. Setting a path for humanity. Expanding on the human experience in the most significant piece of technology ever invented.

Music is playing. Can’t remember the song. It means I’m here, that I’ve reached Thear. But I don’t want to look out the window, because I know what I’ll find.

The photo in the glass case on the wall is gone. One or two pixels still stand, evidence of a past. The rest is gone, atomized.

It’s a strange thing to dream for far far longer than you’ve lived life. And then you wake up to this, a place far away. A place you were supposed to reach first, but no one really thought about what might happen. That maybe people would invent faster ways of travelling. That they might reach the destination much quicker than you. In fact, they might even view the trip as a vacation. A fun trip, like going to the beach.

Thear will be a purple planet with white clouds. Cities everywhere. Incredible inventions whipping around, things I could never have imagined. It will be the future, a thousand years ahead of where I lived. Maybe they’ll let me in. Maybe they’ll let me stay. Or maybe they’ll put me in a cage and study me. The caveman. The fossil. The guy who thought he would be first, but actually is last.

I don’t want to look. Don’t want to confirm the reality. But I do anyway. I go to the glass at the front of the ship and stare at a huge rock in front of me. I’m far back enough to see it all. It’s black. Smoking. The land, where it was, charred and heated. There are no clouds. No ice on the poles. The water is grey and dead. The trees are gone. There’s nothing left. Nothing remotely alive.

People have been here. They did arrive first. They arrived, spent it all, and then they left. A dead planet hangs in space. Off to the side, a sun is shining, but it doesn’t bring any life to this place.

I sit at the glass and try to imagine what this world looked like before we reached it. Must have been beautiful. I’ve spent centuries dreaming about it. Long, cold centuries of nothing but dream.

At the computer, I type: ‘Is this the best we could do?’ I shoot the message into space, in every direction.

I eat. Drink. Wash myself. Go to the mirror. I’m a young man, I think to myself. Young. Indispensable. I have so much potential, I remember people telling me.

I steer the ship to the side, away from the blackened, spent rock that is now Thear. There are stars in front of me, far away in space and time. I set a course for one of them, imagining that something must be out there, far away. A speck of hope. I glimmer of dream. Maybe some place that no one’s ever visited, and I can be the first—an unspoiled land where I can rest.

Pick a star, a voice reminds me. Follow it. Do something big.

I lie in the casket. There are only five lights left. A hint of gas wafts through the air. A light goes out, then another. They all leave, except for a last one. It hangs on, staring at me. Maybe saying goodbye? Maybe saying good luck?

It winks out before I can ask. The first dream that comes is of an ocean, and the power of the waves as they lift me up, as though they were born for this purpose, for this very moment, in a place that I can’t imagine. That I can only dream.

Trent Lewin is a BIPOC, immigrant climate change advocate living in Canada that has been published in Boulevard, december, Grain, and FreeFall. He is currently working on a debut novel.