meet me at the window
by Caroline A. Evey
Response

Immobility
by Amanda Miska
Inspiration Piece

This is what we never set into motion:

Lunch that turned into dinner that turned into dusk that turned into rumpled covers and awkward smiles over morning coffee. You, bleary-eyed and bedheaded. Me, wearing your socks.

Eyes closed, record on, candle burning, wine poured.  You’d sing along, and I’d hum, too shy to let you hear my voice, but wanting so badly to be your harmony. Our eyes meeting when the room goes quiet.  Me, asking, “What now?” with a knowing smile. Your mouth, hard on mine, a new rhythm in my ears.

This is what we never set into motion:

Heavy silences. Mumbled apologies. Sad old love songs and inevitable tears. That final goodbye when you’re driving away and I’m standing there, freezing, but can’t go inside.

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Katherine Johnson
The Iraqi Woman
Inspiration piece

the same questions
By Caroline A. Evey
Response

there were so many things that were foreign to me–
the sights, the smells, the food, the prayers,
the (lack of) infrastructure, the fashion, the small routines —
but, then, there was her.

she would sit and stare that way, in the afternoons,
just as the sun would start to descend along its charted track.

waiting.

if you didn’t pay her any attention,
you would think she was there for something mundane —
a child coming home from school, a delivery,
her husband’s car as he came back from work —
but if you watched her,
really watched her,
you’d see that she was contemplating the same thing you had so many times:

how did i get here?

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Caroline A. Evey
this lesson i pledge
Response

Writing on Hands — First Scar
By Quentin Paquette
Inspiration piece

I think it’s odd that it’s still there.  It’s especially visible in the summer, since it doesn’t tan quite as dark.  It’s on the back of my left hand, rising out of the webspace between my ring and running just to the wrist side of the ring finger’s knuckle.  So much else from that time in my life has left no trace.

It had snowed that week, probably enough to get out of school and go sledding on the steep slope left from where they had carved that half of my elementary school’s playing field out of a hill.  I can remember how hard it was to pull the sled back up that hill when it was slippery.  I remember the runs for sleds and saucers going such a long way down the hill.  Something must have happened between then and now.  The hill doesn’t seem like much to me anymore.  Erosion of some kind, I suspect.

Since the snow day, it had warmed up enough for the streets to be cleared and for school to re-open.  Still the snow remained on the grass, on the hill.  Then the weather had turned cold again, and the soggy top layer of snow froze into a glaze on the top.  As you walked across it, there would be a moment when the icy glaze would support you, but then break through.  Each step had two footfalls.  The mixture of ice and snow wouldn’t pack well.  The icy top layer would grab the runners of your sled and literally stop you in your tracks.  It was too cold to have fun doing much else outside either.

I’d gone to David’s house to play at the end of my fifth grade school day.  He lived about as far east of the school as I lived west of it, maybe a mile total between our houses.  So, I hadn’t gone home first, I had just called mom at work to tell her where I had gone.  I was reminded to be home by dinner at 6.  I shouldn’t have needed reminding, this was always the rule.  As a fifth-grader though, I had a tendency to lose track of time.  David’s mom called down to the basement to say my mom was on the phone.

Hi mom.
Yes.
Yes,… I know.
Sorry mom, I’ll be right home.
Bye.

I said goodbye (I would like to say I thanked David’s mom, but I think that’s unlikely), pulled my coat on, and just crammed my gloves and scarf in the pockets.  Then I took off out the door and started running for home.  It had gotten colder since I was last out, but there was no time to stop and bundle up.  It made the most sense to take a short cut across the schoolyard.  As I skittered and skitched across the top of the hill, I wondered how I was going to get out of trouble, what could I say, what was my punishment likely to be.  Each step of my run sliding a bit before breaking through the ice.

Then one step broke through on the way down, but got caught under the ice when I tried to pick it back up.  My momentum stretched me forward from my caught foot, and my hands flew out ahead of me.  My gloveless hands.  I can’t remember which foot got caught, but I didn’t fly just straight out, but also turned, so that my right elbow and little finger border of my left hand hit first.  My elbow went straight through to the ground, but my hand only broke through with my little and ring fingers, bringing the webspace into the edge of the ice.

My hands were cold, and didn’t feel much.  Or, at least nothing surprising; I’d just landed hard, my hand should hurt.  But when I managed to get my feet back underneath me and stand up, I was surprised.  I didn’t think the snow I’d just been in should have blood-red streaks in it.  Then I saw the drip at the end of my ring finger and followed it’s trail up to the base of it.  I brought it up and sucked the blood out the cut with a kiss, just to have it start to fill in again.

I ran the rest of the way home wondering now if I was going to have to get stitches.  The cut was bad enough to keep me from getting in trouble for being late without calling, but didn’t require any more care than getting cleaned in the bathroom sink and putting some gauze and a band-aid on it.  Still, the scar has remained.  I suspect it’s meant to teach me something.

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Doorways and Discoveries
By Caroline A. Evey
Response

ON DISCOVERIES
By Matt Lurie
Inspiration

When I see the parakeet
bundled like a bouqet
in the 2 pm parking lot
I put down my business cards

lay them out on the gravel
like a homeless architect
assessing stolen blueprints

and mash them into a city
a cheap paper one like Nutley
NJ where that woman baked

her daughter alive and where
my friend Ben King caught a football
hurled from the house that smelled
like rye bread and coconut oil

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Caroline Evey

untitled

Response

Jim Carlisle

Inspiration Piece

Thoughts invoke simple thoughts and wishes, but it’s something more that lies beneath the surface, as the stars come to play I wonder what they hold, and as one streaks through the sky I think of it as a message sent from heaven, no matter where we may be I can always say sweet dreams and wish you a good night…

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or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited

Caroline Evey

what we once were

Response

Hildie Block

Embers

Inspiration Piece

I looked back at the car wreck, behind me near the road.  The wagon was literally wrapped around a tree, just like folks always said.  The moon was beaming down and illuminating me and my brother’s dog, both trying to stay warm by the makeshift fire I made.  Scouting had come in handy.  No cars had come by in what seemed like hours.

He turned his head so his nose could be closer to the flame, “Careful,” I played with his silky ears, “you wouldn’t want to burn your whiskers.”  I looked into the fire, its limited spectrum of colors glowing against black, the black of night and the black of the cinders it was producing in rapid abundance.  I stared steadily into the fire, watching the flames change pattern like the wooden kaleidoscope on the stand back home in my father’s den.  I patted the dog’s head and slid my hand down his lean neck.  I had made the fire; it was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined it to be.  But then again, I had used the matches in my pocket from the 24-hour diner at the motel, and there had been plenty of dry wood just lying around.

The dog shivered to contradict my proud thoughts about building the fire.  I moved the blanket closer around him.  On a gory impulse, I wanted to open up the blanket to examine the wound, the gross gash on the animal’s left flank, but I knew the dog was cold and I didn’t want to cause him anymore trauma than I already had.

Even though it was dark, I had a feeling that the dog was still bleeding.  His leg was wrapped in some old ace bandages I had found in the trunk of my car.  It wasn’t exactly my car; it was my parents’, but now I guess I’d better be prepared to buy it, after what had happened.  My brother and I had always talked about buying a car together someday.  He was fifteen this month and I turned sixteen last July, so I guess “someday” is going to show up mighty fast.

He’s a wonderful kid, my brother.  You never saw a kid love his older brother so much.  I loved him, too, but I never bothered to show it, not that I was mean or anything — maybe sometimes I was — I just wasn’t perfect like him.  Even while he was sick, he was always cheerful and had this angelic look on his face.  Sure he got depressed and all, but he seemed to get over it quicker than I would have, for sure.

Honestly, he was just plain nice.  The kind of kid everyone wants to be best friends with.  I remember not always thinking that way about him, maybe I never really saw him as he truly was.  Then again, maybe I did.  He was terrific to my parents; they never had a headache ’cause of him, not to say they never had a headache, because I sure gave them plenty.  Well, maybe, he was responsible for a few headaches, but that was before he got sick. I stared back into the fire, and then glanced down at the dog.  He had this noble, altruistic look in his eyes, just like my brother had last time I saw him.  He was our dog, my brother’s and mine, but I always got the idea he liked my brother better.  It was the same with my parents. We did about the same things “wrong”, but it was always me who got in more trouble.  Like the time we stayed late after school with the older guys playing basketball in the parking lot behind the Middle School.  I couldn’t believe they asked us; we were just walking by on our way home.  It was great.  We both wanted to stay, woulda given anything to hang with those guys and play on their teams.  It wasn’t my idea, but I was, of course, the one grounded for two weeks.  My brother’s punishment consisted on being “talked to”.  I guess it was because I was older, or something, but one year shouldn’t make so much of a difference.

The dog, Alfred, was a black Lab with muscular shoulders and a sleek black coat.  My dad and my brother used to take him duck hunting every year.  I didn’t usually go; I always felt sorry for the duck.  Dad used to say if you didn’t feel sad eating the duck, then you shouldn’t mind shooting it.  I didn’t want to dwell on this because I liked duck a whole lot.

The dog whimpered and I wondered how much longer he would live; anything could happen.  He could die from shock or exposure; he could bleed to death.  All the gruesome details from health class floated freely in my mind.  The one who would have really cared was gone forever.  I cared, but part of me was gone, too.  My parents, the athletic types, would be too busy playing mixed doubles to really care.  Maybe they would notice because it was my fault.  They always cared when it was my fault.

I was the one who left the new hospital to “go for a drive.”  I went back to the motel and got Alfred and just drove from there.  I had to try to tell Alfred what had happened.  I had no clue where I was; I’d never even been in this stupid state before.  Another car, speeding like a maniac, swerved into my lane, forcing me off the road into woods.  They didn’t stop.  That tree would wreck my chance at a perfect record, something my parents always bragged about, their “perfect records”, like a broken record if you ask me.

The dog wasn’t hurt in the accident; he hurt himself leaping from the wreck, after I had deemed the car totaled and not going anywhere.  He must have caught his leg on the jagged excuse for a door.  I called him, so I guess that was my fault, too.  I glanced into the fire again and lifted my hands to warm them.

My mind raced back to two months of hospitals and doctors and that horrible smell that all medical places have.  I remember searching the doctor’s face as he emerged from the operating room for the last time.  I mean, your little brother just isn’t supposed to get sick and die, just like that.  It’s too weird, I mean, this stuff just doesn’t happen.  It was just a summer cold, then it was mono. By the time they decided it was leukemia, there wasn’t much time left to do anything about it.  It’s not fair —

I looked down at the dog and stroked his belly.  He stopped breathing.  I stared into the flame for a long time until my eyes began to smart, and tears ran down my face.  I turned my head away so the tears would stop, but they didn’t.

I looked back and through my tears the fire seemed brighter. Blinking, I realized that it was the red flash of a police car on the road behind me.  The copper’s flash light found me and in a booming voice he said, “Son, there’s some folks awful worried about you.  Why don’t you come with me.”

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or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited

Amy Souza
Digitally manipulated photograph
Inspiration piece

Home Away
By Caroline Evey
Response

everything she thought she had was being taken.
it was not literal. her belongings were fine.
but what are belongings?
it was something more important that had gone..
something far more central to her.

so she had to leave.

it was back here she found herself,
quietly tracing her way down the shoreline.
she had been here so many times she was thankful:
for the salt in the air,
for the sand in her toes,
for the waves lapping up onto her feet.
she was thankful that in the moments she spent here,
all she had to do was be.
no talking, no questions, no complications…
and whenever her head wouldn’t leave her alone,
she just went and walked the shore
until she had walked past all of the questions,
skimmed over the plethora of possibilities,
and landed at what was important:
she is alive.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.