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Perceptions

September 23, 2022
Lily Lustig

Prologue: Blur I am a pair of slender, purple-rimmed spectacles. I make for simple mornings and effortless evenings. I offer color and clues. I am a sight and I am sight itself. (More literally, here in 2011, I am a 10-year-old girl with glasses and the author of this piece. But the first part is more important.) March 8, 2021: The Appointment (Part 2) (Gold Aviators) In the words of Les Misérables, “The time is now / The day is here.” My new optometrist has just returned to this bleak, grey-cloaked examination room. Dr. Joseph Isik defies everything that I’ve come to expect of an eye specialist: he can hold a conversation, trusts my judgment, and has the dimensions and radiance of a fluorescent lamp. He has revealed that I have a nevus on my left eye. He has gone so far as to compliment my irises, despite seeing dozens of them each day. (“They’re just hazel,” I mean to say, but his praise has transfixed me.) “Alrighty, the moment of truth,” he sings. Opening his palms like the magician he surely is, Isik reveals two teeny plastic cartons. I have spent months pining for their contents. I have spent a decade fearing them.. Do I fare well with any entities or substances coming even remotely close to my eyes? No. No. In fact, I react quite poorly in such situations. But it’s decided. I have committed to joining the mainstream. No more clouded vision. In order to turn a new leaf, I must cast aside my anxieties and embrace the subtle art of jabbing my fingers into my eye sockets. Passing me my first lens, Isik gives a brief demonstration of the task at hand. Appears easy enough. Perhaps, the doctor ponders, we can begin with a simple exercise: touching my index finger to my naked cornea. Sounds somewhat doable. I give it a shot. I nearly throw up. My squeamishness, it would seem, has not faded away as gracefully as I had hoped. But before I can apologize for being so shamefully sensitive, Isik has begun prying open my lids in an attempt to insert the contacts himself. It is a Clockwork Orange waking nightmare; it is the sincerest act of care. And though I lightly squeal and squirm, I certainly handle myself better this time around. Blinking profusely, I come to, glance around the room, and realize that I can see. September 16, 2014: Practice (Part 1) (Black Ray-Bans) They noticed that I was pretty good with my feet, so they made me field hockey goalie for the season. The whole thing reeks of desperation: their star keeper’s in high school now, whereas two years ago, after completing 21 shuttles of the PACER test (out of, like, 150), I started hacking like the victim of chronic asbestos exposure. I’m no athlete, and they know it. But they need a goalie on their roster. I’ve signed my name, and – to be honest – I’m more than a little jazzed to be part of a team. Today’s our first practice and here in the claustrophobic girls’ locker room, I’ve donned all the fetid, chunky, garish orange gear. (There are pads, quite literally, everywhere.) Only one component remains: the brain barrier herself, my helmet. And here she comes! She’s jet black, she’s heavier than a newborn baby, she carries the aroma of a dead squirrel. Oh, she’s just grand. Coronate me, coach! And as the crown descends upon my head, I wish my former self well, knowing that a new epoch has begun. Goodbye, horribly-cliché-13-year-old sob story, and hello – “You’ll need to take off your glasses.” Cue panic. “Oh. Um. But then I won’t be able to … see.” Nice one. “You have contacts, don’t you?” I do not. “I do not.” “Well for God’s sake, kid, how did you think this was gonna go?” Ahem, you came to me, remember? And if you don’t let me play, you’re screwed, lady. “I’m so, so, so, so, so sorry! I promise I can make it work! Can we loosen this? I’ll just cram the glasses underneath. See?” Breathing labored and frames askew, I have sealed my fate for the next two months. “Look, as long as your vision’s intact, you can do whatever you want.” Alright, I’ll take it. But just know that I will never, under any circumstances, get contacts. March 9, 2021: Practice (Part 2) Day 2 with contacts. Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yesterday, you wore them for five minutes, and you neither put them in nor took them out yourself. Today, you have yet to attempt insertion. Because you’re absolutely mortified by the prospect of it. But that’s why you’ve set aside 30 whole minutes before class! You cannot possibly take half an hour to do that which a normal person does in 10 seconds!! That would be downright ludacris!!! Crack open the first case. Scrub your hands until they sparkle. Now dry them until they burn. Place the lens on the very tip of your index finger. Look in the mirror but for the love of God, do not look yourself in the eye. Align your missile with your target. Ignore the faint ringing in your ears that suggests you’re losing consciousness. Ignore the faint taps of your housemate at the door – yes, you’ve overtaken the one shared bathroom, but dammit, she can wait. Allow your soul to leave your body. Aim. Fire. AND BAM! You’ve failed in the most pathetic fashion imaginable. Not only did your manic blinking block the contact from your cornea – it has also caused the lens to drop directly down the drain. And somehow, your unscathed eye still stings like an alcohol-dabbed wound. It’s fine. You have dozens more. Repeat the process. Repeat the process. Repeat the process and praise every otherworldly being for preserving this lens, no matter how averse it is to suctioning to your face. Repeat the process and WAIT, something’s happening here, blink blink blink, the contact’s not on your finger anymore, and now there’s a new kind of stinging, as if your eye has developed a tumorous growth, and you want nothing more than to expel this foreign object from your person but you fight the urge to perform the “Out, vile jelly!” scene from King Lear and would you look at that! Praise be! You’ve done it! Equipped with 20/15 vision, you have officially defied all odds. Revel in this moment for as long as it takes to regain your sense of awareness. Now use this mediocre eyesight to check the time, and thank yourself again for factoring in that healthy half-hour cushion. Squint. Let the clock come into focus. Class started 6 minutes ago. May 24, 2018: The Appointment (Part 1) (Tortoise Frames) In the words of Les Misérables, “The time is now / The day is here.” I’ve mustered up the courage to tell my optomotrist – Martin Newman, whose patients praise him online as “an older, relatively obese man who has absolutely no personality” – that I want contacts. I suppose “want” is an overstatement. But I’m ready for my big reveal, my Velma moment; the time when everyone who’s seen my face almost every day for the past 7 years will finally, truly, see my face. Newman’s making sure that my prescription hasn’t changed. The alarming proximity of our faces is made even more distressing by his severe breaths. They’re more a thunder than a wheeze; they resound straight through to my retinas. As he rolls away on his miniscule, one-moment-from-imploding-under-his-intense-and-highly-concentrated-weight stool, I make my own shuddering exhalation. Here goes nothing. “Dr. Newman, I was wondering if I might be able to get contacts today.” The word “contact” precludes him – in every possible irony – from meeting my gaze. “…Do you think that would be possible?” And suddenly two bratwursts (later recognized as Newman’s fingers) are tugging at my eyelids, while two more squeeze a chartreuse fluid into my now-gaping sockets. I go berserk. “EEEEEEEEEEERRRRGHGGGGGGGGGRGGGGGGGGRGGGGGGGGGHHHH,” squawks the incapacitated girl to her merciless assailant, flailing slightly and causing the liquid to fall like tainted, toxic tears. “If you cannot handle that, young lady, you cannot handle contacts.” Ah, how swell. I suppose now’s as fitting a time as ever to hit rock bottom. March 13, 2021: Driving Lesson This is My Year. I relinquished my “minor” status two years ago, but Today I am an Adult. Because I have Contacts. And before long, I’m going to get my Driver’s License. And right now, I’m Driving, training for my Road Test, while wearing – you guessed it – the Contacts that I put into my Eyes this morning with Relative Ease. Life is going So Well. So Well! Am I…the Best Driver Ever? The Most Independent Person? Whocaresthatmydadislegallyobligatedtobeinthepassengerseatrightnow? I have Matured. Kind of funky that my head is … Pounding right now. That the street sign a few feet away is … Illegible. That, upon closer consideration, my distance vision has … Gone Completely to Shit. Okay. It’s Totally Fine. Maybe if I just rub my eyes a little … here at this red light … Rubrubrubrubrubrub. Fuck. It appears that my Left Lens. Which is decidedly the wrong prescription. Has dislodged itself from my cornea. And found a home under the gas pedal. I Abhor Contacts. March 29, 2020: Fog (Part 2) (Blue Translucent Frames) To step outside is to be blinded. To take one breath is to envelope yourself in a weighty, pervasive cloud. To live through a pandemic is to become your most melodramatic diarist. What I mean is that glasses and KN95s do a great job of prohibiting each other from carrying out their basic functions. Even more simply: mask + glasses = major condensation. And yes, I’ll take foggy vision over risk of infection any day. And yes, this minor inconvenience is even more insignificant in the context of a global health crisis. And yes, there’s an easy fix to this minute hindrance. I’ve been rethinking my vendetta against contacts. November 15, 2018: Fog (Part 1) (Blue Translucent Frames) A passage from the first book of The Aeneid, translated today in class: “Venus surrounds the walking men [Aeneas and his friend Achates] with a dark cloud, and the goddess enveloped them with a great cloak of fog, so that no one was able to discern them, nor to touch them, nor to construct a delay, nor to ask the causes of their coming.” “Discern” is a potent word, states my Latin instructor. It means to see someone for who they truly are. It goes beyond mere sight. I would like to be seen. December 8, 2021: In My Eyes A planet drifts within each pool of milk. Their crusts are a stormy cerulean, their mantle a soft chartreuse. Their outer core is a rusty brown, their inner core an impossible black hole. I couldn’t distinguish such subtleties before; perhaps I hadn’t even tried. But no longer must I gaze through window panes, with their smudges and cobwebs and – figurative – bird droppings. Never have I observed life with such ease. Staring at a mirror, into my own pupils, I can discern a faint reflection. She’s hardly abstracted. She’s distant, yet she couldn’t be closer. I think she looks rather lovely. Epilogue: Blur It’s terribly odd to be recognized. Does my current image not differ from the one that exists within your memory? Have I not, in turn, transcended perception? In this choice, did I seek conspicuousness or invisibility? And what does it mean if I see differently and see myself differently and yet am (seen) just the same? Defining yourself by a flimsy pair of frames is a mistake. Electing to abandon those frames is psychotic. It leaves you with no choice but to build from scratch – to redesign and reconstruct your entire person. It’s the self-inflicted identity crisis that you thought you could hold off for at least a few more years. But what, then, does it mean to find comfort in this current state? And balance, knowing that you have not completely cast aside that other way of life and may switch between your two modes whenever you see fit? At my bedside, the gold aviators sit neatly in their case. Oh, please. With each metaphor, you dig yourself deeper into the world’s most shallow abyss. Sure, you switched to contacts at age 20. But when were you planning to tell them that you still can’t ride a bike?

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A Table of Our Own

Lucy Kaplan
November 12, 2025

A Table of Our Own I arrange tea candles on the tablecloth, makeshift and patterned by stains that bleed into the florals. A relic of our parents’ generation, the textile is only thick enough to disguise the aged wood it envelopes when folded twice over itself. Tonight, it bares the weight of the six hours I spent cooking. We have first une salade niçoise served with lightly candied brussel sprouts. A crested hill of layered caprese follows, sliced baguette flowering its perimeter. Guests arrive in waves. Three are early and two are insultingly late, forgiven for the gossip they bring to the table. She told me he didn’t even wave when he saw her the morning after. Friends present gifts of crisp grapes, whimsical confections, bottles they pray aren’t too sweet. As we find our seats, I wonder: is this the dinner party of our parents’ generation or a reincarnation of our childhood birthday celebrations? It seems to me as if every young adult loves a dinner party. A gathering classy enough to warrant dressing with inspiration, but intimate enough to speak without reservation. Maybe it’s the breaking of bread, a practice reportedly powerful enough to have united the Democrats and the Federalists, the Wampanoag and the colonists. But just as those narratives are not simple truths, neither is the elation of our careful gatherings. Dining together can be as unpleasant as it is festive. Generations of meals have been the source of unassailable tension: reunions made unpalatable by parental bickering and younger brothers smacking their gravy-smeared lips. In attendance are the people we love—though perhaps do not always like. Our dinner parties, however, are distinct in their autonomy of choice. In childhood, parents managed the grunt work, pitching fairy-lit tents in the living room, ordering pizza to satiate the crowd. Now, we find ourselves left to our own devices. We create countless lists in the name of adulthood. Dinner 07.13 Invite list: Yeses, nos, maybe-sos. A back-up list if someone falls through; empty chairs thrill no one. Invitation draft: Dearest friends, you have been chosen. Dress appropriately. Menu: Parmesan crisped yams, miso butter gnocchi, flank steak. Made to impress. Shopping list: Chicory root, sardines, brie. The cheapest available. Setting the table, I think about generations past. Decades prior, someone else a few years older must have stood in this kitchen—a local career politician or an established dermatologist. He too was expecting visitors, but with not nearly as much anticipation. He knew the procedure by rote—when to serve the second course, when to slyly refill his neighbor’s wine glass. He could identify a false laugh and ease a lapse in conversation without skipping a beat. The guests were familiar, practiced in leaving their shoes at the front door. I can almost place my childhood self into the scene: sunken into the corner chair, across from the man in the ugly scarf. Last time I saw you, I could have fit you in my briefcase! Why do middle-aged academics delight in making middle-schoolers feel small? Our guests are poles apart, far closer in affect to the children our parents once invited to summer movie nights on our behalf. They stumble at the formalities. Someone might forego the formal dress code for a sloppy pair of basketball shorts; we will say nothing but stare as he meticulously covers his lap with a napkin. Dock one point. Someone else might bring a new boyfriend with no notice; we will feign placidity as he pulls an extra seat between a pair of best friends longing to catch up. Dock two points, maybe even three. But what we lack in finesse we make up for in forgiveness. Friendship is a delicate thing—we know some faux pas are best granted a silent pardon. Warm light washes down our nerves as the feast begins. Some go all-in, stacking their plates with mismatched goodies brought by unpracticed guests. (Was this supposed to be a potluck? No one quite got the story straight.) Others graze, arms extending clumsily across the table to pluck an olive, a “pardon my reach” carefully uttered. We take an unspoken pride in our maturity, remembering our pleases and thank-yous so far from the oversight of our elders. The night then goes one of two ways. The clinking of cutlery might crescendo at half-past nine. Replacing it will be an awkwardness which we bear with guilt. If the spark of enlightened conversation never catches fire, we are left with a table full of friends-turned-family-turned-strangers. We might have worn the badges we found in our parents’ closets with too much assurance. Cause of death: an indulgence of formality and poverty of wine. One can only pretend that they don’t want to talk about sex for so long. Tonight, however, we evade a tragedy of the commons. The now unlit candles go unnoticed, puttering out one after the other; as the tablecloth dims, our momentum only swells. Half of the crowd is debating the merits of Machiavelli, the other half the audacity of a kid we knew from high school. The catch is, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone is full and no one wants to leave. Someone reveals an expensively curated box of chocolates from a rumpled tote they had carefully hidden beneath the table. We pass it counterclockwise, excitedly snagging the sweet recommended by the person before. I bite down and my mouth bursts with nostalgia. A buttery shortbread, laced with silky caramel and enrobed in milk chocolate—a Twix bar by another name. I watch my friends bite into rebranded versions of their own childhood favorites: Snickers, Milky Way, Almond Joy. Are they too thinking about Halloweens past? How we zealously provoked territorial disputes over the mounds of sweets poured onto my living room floor. It feels no different than how we tonight bicker over who deserves the final drops from the bottle. Across the table sits the girl who watched me blow out purple candles on my eleventh birthday. She wore different glasses back then, thicker frames that obscured the brilliant eyes that now lock with mine. I watch her fingers toy with the stem of a glass as she chews her grown-up Kit Kat. To love her is to peer through a foggy window. If I squint, I can piece together the blurry outlines of our past: the pizza parties, the Halloween spats, the movie nights we spent wrapped in blankets on the porch. Then a new image clears—decades of future soirees coming into view. I am elated to see that the future unfolds not at our parents’ tables, but around a table of our own.

Zia Felicetta: A Portrait

Luca Raffa
November 12, 2025

I parked in her empty driveway and approached the proud house with stubborn orange bricks. The black railing guiding me to the door ailed with rust, though the white paint on the house was fresh as the snow. It was dim, the sun obscured in this dull December sadness, and the icy lake winds caused the lampposts to shiver with doubt. I rang the little doorbell and peered around. The short bungalows huddled close together to keep warm from the snow. Darkness was beginning to blanket the neighborhood. Suddenly, a faint light flickered on from inside. I peeked through the doorframe glass with a smile and watched as a figure hurried towards me. The door opened. Zia Felicetta greeted me with a tender hug and the touch of her delicate cheeks on each of mine. Her demeanor was elusive, her faint smile always uncertain below her serious eyes––sad, dry eyes which caved into her head and cast shadows. The wrinkles on her cheeks and on her forehead revealed the scars of time, though her small diamond earrings restored some dormant youth still hiding within her. Black strands like needles freckled the white hay that crowned her head. Zia waddled towards the kitchen, and her plump body disappeared into the dark. A nativity scene of plastic figurines emerged in the corner. Zia had been a widow for over forty years and was the last and only surviving of five loving sisters and their husbands. Across the walls, these ghosts gawked at me, black and white, through the frames: Zia’s husband holding her tight in her wedding dress; her sisters––Carmella, Roquina, Peppinella, and Maria, my grandmother––through the years at her wedding, and at their weddings, and at their children’s weddings; her nephews and nieces who died as infants; the only surviving photograph of her mother Vittoria, the woman she watched die as an infant, wearing a dirt-caked shirt, a shoddy headscarf, and a faint smile; her father as a young man with a black coppola hat and a black mustache; and the same man with a bushy grey mustache and slicked back hair. Hovering higher on the walls were images of saints, Gesù, crucifixes, and a collection of memoriam cards she gathered over years from funerals. She even framed a photograph of Montoleone di Puglia, the town she left behind: a cluster of orange shingles, brown bricks, and white concrete sleeping on a hill and surrounded by green planes and wildflowers. Zia returned holding a ready plate of cookies wrapped in tinfoil, the wrinkly fat drooping from her arms from the weight of the plate. She invited me to sit at the table and offered me an espresso which I knew I could never refuse. She vanished again into the kitchen, and in the silence of her home I could hear the clanking as she fed the cafetera the espresso grinds and placed it on the stove. When she returned to the dining room table, she unwrapped the cold cookies. She enjoyed making food and freezing it for an infrequent visitor. She put a hard candy into her mouth that reeked of licorice, anise, and fennel and began to suck. The hot espresso breathed life into us and kindled conversation. She was simple, of little words, knowing only how to talk about her food, her family, her garden, or God. She had no preferences, few opinions. She paused a lot and would watch me. She was a patient woman, watching intently and listening as I sipped on my bitter espresso. When she began to speak, the movement of her firm jaw and soft lips came together in a symphony of schwas. Soon, it was time for me to depart and return Zia to her solitude. Her frail pleas asking me to stay surrendered to my guilty resoluteness, and she disappeared into the basement for one last parting gift. As I waited for her before the door, I glanced at the frames on the wall again. I started to wonder if Zia ever talked to these ghosts––after all, she was a spiritual woman. Zia emerged from the staircase and brought me more cookies in tinfoil and a panettone to remember her by. She embraced me and kissed each cheek, speaking to me I love you in her unsteady English. I said goodbye. She waited alone in the frame of the door. The cold followed her inside. I thought about how she might become a photograph someday, and my heart sank.

A Few Impressions

Juliet Corwin
November 6, 2025

– CT, left wrist – I drove to Connecticut to get my first tattoo. The studio, smaller than its parking lot, was tucked away in a gray fold of Stamford. It had been a drizzly morning, and clouds sighed as I walked to the entrance. Timidly, I leaned against the door so it wouldn’t slam shut and scanned the space for a pair of eyes to meet mine. It was my first time inside a tattoo studio, and it showed. Two feet in front of me, a woman lay on her side in a shirt, underwear, and Doc Martens. She chatted with her artist, who hunched over a spread of ink covering the woman’s thigh. The walls were covered in overlapping sketches and prints. Sitting by the only other station in the room was a large man with a permanent frown and huge biceps. I gathered that he would be my artist, and moved toward him. His frown deepened when he saw me. He spoke in short sentences, his voice low and quiet. I showed him the tattoo I wanted and presented my wrist to draw on. Opting for a purple marker, he splashed the design onto my skin way too big. I asked if he could make it any smaller. His eyebrows lifted, but he rubbed away the first drawing and drew it again, a bit smaller. I looked at him pleadingly, too nervous to ask him to change it again. He took the hint and resized it once more. It was tiny, barely a quarter of an inch in height and width. I smiled, and his mouth flattened into a straight line. He prepped the ink and the tattoo gun, and didn’t wear gloves. It took about five minutes to ink the design using the thinnest needle he had. He wiped the excess ink and a few drops of blood from my skin, and I could see the little lines now adorning my wrist. It was perfect. He explained to me that he typically asked clients to pay upwards of $100, but for this he wouldn’t charge more than $40. I paid him $60 and thanked him again. He nodded and pressed one of his sketches into my hand. I had been admiring it while the needle dragged along my skin. It was full of color and soft lines, a warm swirl of tones. As I stepped out the door, I saw that the woman getting the leg tattoo was now eating takeout with her artist. I walked back to my car, watching the clouds inch lower. My wrist stung as I spun the steering wheel home. – MA, right ear – For one of my later tattoos, I filled out an online appointment form for a studio in my hometown in Western Massachusetts. I got matched with an artist named Ian. The space was big, with a lower level for tattoos and an upper level for piercings. There was a waiting area with high ceilings and tons of plants. Ian emerged from his studio and greeted me with a warmth I trusted. He was bald with a long, white beard and eyes that crinkled when he spoke. Ushering me into his studio, he told me to hop up on the table and rolled his chair over to join me. The design I had chosen was simple, and I wanted it to sit behind my ear. He used a disposable razor to shave the edge of my hairline. As the blade scraped at my scalp, we chatted about tattoos I’d gotten in the past. We sized down from the first print he had made, and then he carefully peeled a purple outline onto my skin. He handed me a small mirror that reflected into a big mirror on the wall so that I could see the placement. I told him I liked it. He instructed me to stretch one arm out past my head and rest my cheek on it, lying on my side. The tattoo took forty minutes to ink, and he spoke the whole time. He asked me about myself, about school, about the tattoo’s meaning. I tried to answer in a calm and steady voice despite the pulsating needle bouncing against my skull. Several times he praised my composure, saying that most clients who got tattooed behind their ears can’t sit very well. It wasn’t hard to understand why. When he was done, he told me to take my time getting up. I ignored his advice, pushing up fast and immediately regretting my choice. The sudden absence of vibration on my head left my vision blurry, and I felt lightheaded as I walked back to the waiting area to pay. The person at the register was bubbly and asked loudly if I loved my new ink. I did, and told them so, paid and tipped Ian. I walked out onto the streets of my childhood, my new ink still buzzing quietly. – MN, right hip – My favorite tattoo was inked in Minnesota. A cold Thursday night in December, I arrived at a brightly lit studio in Minneapolis. I was a few minutes early, and sat on a very hard bench in the waiting area. My artist was finishing up with another client, so I pored over the design I’d asked for again. The appointment didn’t start for another forty minutes. When my artist finally came over and said she was ready for me, she seemed annoyed. I showed her the design and she scowled at me, snatching up her iPad and scribbling. She asked me if I had drawn it myself, which I had. After some more silent drawing, she held the iPad toward me. She had taken my (admittedly unskilled) design and created a much better tattoo. Her lines were clean, the shape gentle. I thanked her, she sighed. I wanted the tattoo on my hip, but because of the weather I’d worn sweatpants over my shorts. She rolled her eyes as I took off my sweatpants, pointing out that I could keep one of the legs on if I wanted to. I took the suggestion. When we sized the tattoo, she gave me three options. I picked the middle one, and she placed the outline on my hip. I walked, half-sweatpantsed, to the mirror and watched how the design moved with me. I loved it. I got up onto the table, lying on my side as she instructed. She inked in silence, except for a frustrated question about whether I was holding my breath. I had been, without realizing it, and tried to slowly exhale without annoying her further. When it was finished, my new ink looked delicate and natural on my skin. It is still the best tattoo I have. I carefully pulled the leg of my sweatpants back on over the wrapped ink. As I walked back into the Minnesota snow, my hip pinched with each step.

Two-Day Trip Home

Elaine Rand
November 6, 2025

There’s a new fence in the yard where the trellis once kissed the ground, a padlock on the gate in the alley left by an admirer or a forgetful biker. The front door of the house is newly painted navy blue, but the latch still sticks. An assortment of sunscreen bottles, displaced from the back porch, live in the garage alongside the dead dog’s bed, which has been inherited by my parents’ new one. Sunscreen spread on skin, bug spray interrupted by the sound of barking. I throw the puppy a ball, and she runs around the periphery of the yard, still chasing something invisible long after she has caught it in her mouth. Once, we pitched a tent here, but the pea popped up beneath my back. The tent’s been lost for a decade now. Dirt on the lawn chairs, dirt under fingernails, plastic sacks of mulch stacked tall. A smear of Indiana soil on the back steps to be powerwashed come next year. Inside the house, hairballs nestle in the gap between the refrigerator and the linoleum. The countertop is home to packets of tuna, a plastic Brita pitcher covered in hard water film, recalled pistachios yet to be thrown away. On the wall hangs the prim calendar, which still reads “March” in June. On the floor, WD-40 and Clorox wipes share real estate with cans of wet food and salmon dog treats for brain health. I can hear the nettles rattling outside. They’re strewn along the berm so the puppy can’t romp without getting her short legs caught. Through the window, there’s the redbud that sprouted where the garden patch used to be, more tenacious than the tomatoes. It towers over the ghosts of withered vines, the home-farming love fest brief and barely remembered. There is honor in an intact ear, one without the cartilage pierced—my mother said so long ago. But is there honor in an ear that burns? Both of mine turn bright when someone’s grandma asks me if I’m single. She showed my picture to her son. Lucky that breathing fire with a closed mouth leaves the tongue’s flames extinguished. I smile and deflect, teeth thick with ash. Tomorrow, I will drive away, “Wide Open Spaces” on the stereo. No flat land precipice to fall from anymore. The voices haven’t changed. No new timbres, no unexpected inflections, only the occasional quiet indignity. My shadow informs the conversations. Hello to the teenage neighbor I babysat when she was three and I was 12. Hello to my best friend’s brother, who has forgotten my name. Hello to the photo of great-aunts Elaine and Madeline on the mantle. Goodbye to the swimming pool by my elementary school; I used to leap into the water again and again. Goodbye to the cornfield, razed to build a strip mall, and the strip mall, minced and bulldozed to make room for a high rise. Goodbye to the uncertainty that once roiled inside me in the neighborhood where I used to live. I’ve juiced every drop I can from this place. When I take a sip, I taste only the dregs. Two days ago, I boiled soba noodles and cut hot peppers and cilantro for lunch, snapping carrots in half as men sprayed the dead trees outside with red paint and ran the chainsaw. Today, the radio on the porch plays a couple seconds ahead of the one in the living room, the sponsorship message echoing as it sings: “Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”

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