Every Night, I Wake in the Witching Hour

By Kristin Entler

After "Large Blue Anthropometry [ANT 105]" by Yves Klein, 1960

Thin blue plumes of smoke float above the surface of the water; in my stomach, I feel a shame bubbling up from some deep panic blanched canvas-white, so I measure the wingspan of my emotions as if I don’t know I will end up overwhelmed, choking on feathers when all I see is dwindling lung capacity in fog waiting, an inhaler always on the edge of the bed.

Kristin Entler was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 6 months old, and diabetes at 12, several years before coming out as LGBT+; her work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, storySouth, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Hobart among others.

Art by Kristin Entler.

Teaching English

By Emily Dillon

Driving a student home after reporting child abuse against her, wondering if the abusive father will answer the door; teachers secretly playing bingo during our 45-minute active shooter training; deciding which students will move the teacher’s desk in front of the door when an active shooter is outside; unable to breathe, staring at the computer screen, 125 essays to grade every three weeks; the student who ran away from home; the student whose brother was murdered (strangled); the co-teacher who said, "those parents need to stop pulling their pants down and having kids" and "that student is such a bitch;" reporting that co-teacher and knowing he went to work at another school; bruises on my legs from pushing desks back into place; losing my best friend to another career; losing my next two friends to other careers; losing a school to poor administration; the student who threw her body against my classroom door trying to fight me; no one reading my special education reports but checking that I wrote them; withholding report cards until students pay the cafeteria bill; students not knowing where to turn in their free-and-reduced-price meal forms; buying the top two requested items for our students: deodorant and clothing detergent; the squirrel in the ceiling; the vice principal reading off slides in professional development; sick every fall, every winter, every spring, whenever the students return from break; a student whose house burned down the night before; the student that made random high pitched beeps in class; the department supervisor who took a meeting with feet up on her desk; the student who missed class for a month because he was playing video games at home; the counselor emailing saying that I’m doing a great job; the daily fourth-period routine, 46-minutes long: lock computer, lock classroom door, fill up water bottle, use bathroom, breathe 5 times as prescribed by doctor, exit bathroom, grab lunchbox from fridge, microwave lunch, unlock classroom door, unlock computer, eat lunch, answer all emails, plan next day’s lesson, print handouts, lock computer, lock classroom door, return lunchbox, pick up printouts, make copies, unlock classroom door, unlock computer, host lunch detention; and did you know that a whipped wire has to leave a bruise or mark on the body—no matter the skin color—to be considered child abuse?

Emily Dillon is a writer and educator from Maryland whose creative work ranges from nonfiction to poetry and all the lyrical places in-between; find her on www.emilydillonwriting.com.

Art by Chas Foster.

Using Nonlinear Orthography, the Heptapods from Arrival Tell Me You Will Die

By Amber Nuyens

I watch Arrival and wonder if I’d like to have known that you were going to die, with The Before, During, and After imprinted into my memory entirely non-sequentially, like it had always been there and my only duty was to experience it and I wonder, would the heptapods be so kind as to let me down gently, or would they rip the proverbial band-aid off like Facebook did anyways, but then I don’t think the delivery would matter because it would still make me want to die, but after the initial wanting to die, I wonder if I would have felt more okay when it actually happened—after you died, I spent weeks wondering if it happened or if I had a breakdown and made it up, like when you have a really fucked up dream and have to check and make sure it didn’t happen when you wake up, but if I knew you were going to die, I would have been subjected to the classic “break time and save them or let the future happen as it’s supposed to” moral dilemma that Louise and Ian experienced in the movie where they couldn’t do anything for their dying child besides watch her, but I could have called you and I could have woken up extra early and said something like “just don’t go out today” or “wait until the snow plows are running” and maybe the universe would have imploded and the heptapods would have gotten mad at me but then you wouldn’t have died, or everyone would have died which is fine because then none of us would have been sad and I wouldn’t have cried in public which you know I hate doing, and maybe before this I would ask the heptapods if I could stop you, and I assume they would write “absolutely not” in Heptapod B and then not enough Februarys ago I would have to wake up and know that it was you on the news and maybe that would be too much and I would die of guilt and if there’s an afterlife I would join you but I would probably be so angry that the heptapods were right that I would have to sit by myself in the afterlife for a while to collect myself, and then I would probably find you and let you hug me, not the other way around, because I was never a hugger.

Amber Nuyens (she/her) is a creative writing student living on Syilx land with her elderly lizard and her work has previously appeared in Perhappened, Second Chance Lit, Glitchwords, and elsewhere; find her on twitter @amberuhh.

Art by Jay Baker, an artist from Colorado living in Oregon, by way of New Mexico; he records music as Tom Foe.