And You're Gone & Maybe Paris
“Silhouette of a Bird” by Elizabeth Ridge
And You’re Gone
Hair curtains the eyes of a shy teenager as she puts a pregnancy test on the counter of the gas station check out. Shaking the hair out of her face, she asks for a pack of camel lights. She digs in her purse for her ID, hands skipping across bent pictures of her brother at age six, his smile already ghosting from the friction of rubbing against the tube of lip gloss and the pack of cinnamon gum, the loose change, and a scattering of hair ties. Her phone rings, but she doesn’t answer, knowing it’s her mother again, wondering when she’s going to come home. It’s been 3 months.
You’ll think about her tonight. Your father will slip out his tongue to receive pills with names that sound like failed rock bands, the bumps of his taste buds like acne across gourds. Each syringe of liquid souring his face. His is a forlorn building in a neighborhood rarely visited, but keeping him alive feels essential. If you could remember what it felt like to be taken care of as an infant, a toddler, anything before kindergarten, you could do this with more gratitude. But like the girl’s cigarettes, we all do bad things to ourselves; knowing better doesn’t stop the consequences.
Another night at the checkout, and the curved mirror catches a teenage boy, swallowed by his coat, the bright colors a beacon; his age and the a-symmetrical lift of his lips a warning. You’re hourly, a position of negotiating rights and wrongs, and so you hope he takes some food, but he opens the beer cooler, his lank long hair—you’d love to wash, to cut, and style—is lifted by the jet of cooler air, and he’s taking too long to decide, to reposition each can.
On the gas pump cameras, the lot is clear. It’s just the teenager.
You come out from behind the counter. A serious rule. One not so easily ignored. The lights buzz and the hot dogs roll on soaking up the heat, withering. You run your arms across the single serving bag of chips, knocking them to the ground, but the boy doesn’t flee. You stand behind him, and still, he grabs at the metal cans, the cold a mist surrounding you. You clear your throat and there is your father, and you feel the dryness of your tongue. The boy turns with a clunk, cans resettling under and in his coat. Teal, and yellow, and black, and smudges along the zipper protector, and his lip lifting, and you made for the medicine of this bad choice, but there’s a pause.
“You don’t have to say anything.” He nods toward the door.
“We’re on camera.” You gesture toward the corner.
“What if I told you, it was for a good reason? A sad story, you know? I might be in danger.”
He giraffes above you, that hair almost to his elbows. You want to touch him, give him something unsayable, something you couldn’t give the girl, each of their lives a bit of ash on the end of a cigarette, your own nothing but a filter, your opportunities for disaster dwindling with each passing year.
You pivot to let him go, and he reaches down. You’re flinching, but his chin bobs on your shoulder, that arm so lightly across your back, and the hair brushing across your ear.
And he’s gone.
“Hurricane Ian Rained Upon Rose #4” by Jim Ross
Maybe Paris
The bees greet me at the edge of the sticky tape, the wings glued fast, their mouths little maws of complaint. Others love them for their sticky gold, but I want their stingers. The poison is my wife's only escape from her MS flares.
How many, she asks, as I apply the salve, the leather gloves rough on her skin.
You don't want to know, I say.
I told her once, went as far as showing her the entire process. Trapping them, talking them through their deaths, the smell of the canned spray, and the delicate removal of their stingers under the microscopes. How they all look the same when viewed this way. She wanted to give them names, invent quirky personalities as they twitched on the glue strip. Wanted to call me a farmer as if I wasn't a murderer.
She grips the handrest of the office chair. One of the few places she feels some comfort. We’ve got it in front of our kitchen table so we can talk while I make dinner. I slice up vegetables while she tells me about her students. How the best of them want to help.
Five years in and there’s a constant buzzing through her muscles and joints. Something trying to vibrate and erupt from her skin. Her face a constant mask, morphing through the worst of the pain.
I work the cream, a mixture of methanol and the crushed stingers, a recipe found on the internet, over her arms and then her legs. I try to nuzzle her neck with my beard, but she nudges me away, tells me to focus.
Sometimes the salve works, brings her relief for a few days, maybe a week, but the threat of relapse is always there. It stalks and catches her in the middle of a drive to the grocery store, during a walk around the conservation pond, at our daughter’s 6th grade graduation.
Today, her head drops back, and the lines from her face smooth. The first few times I took some satisfaction, thought I’d done something to bring her a new kind of relief. It never lasts. All she wants to do is rest. But I’ve got plans. So many I write them down on a stack of index cards I keep in my shirt pocket. The one with all of the emergency numbers I take out and replace every morning. Though I’ve got them memorized, I’ve seen what fear and shock can do to my mind.
We had plans to travel. Dreamed of reaching all the states. Maybe Paris. Been to more hospitals and urgent cares, tried all the experimental drugs, and I’m out here killing bees, ordering them through 1 day shipping, building bee boxes.
Sing me that song, she says. Her hands lie flat on the armrest. Her chest rises easily. And I start to sing, my voice catching, trying to find the tune she loves. Filling the room with my own vibrations, a wave to keep the pain away.
About the author
Tommy Dean lives in Indiana with his wife and two children. He is the Editor at Fractured Lit. He has been previously published in The Lascaux Review, New World Writing, and Pithead Chapel. His stories have been included in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020. Find him @TommyDeanWriter.
about the artists
About the artist
Elizabeth Ridge is a published author and artist living in Iowa. She finds free verse poetry and and playing with multiple art mediums is the best way to explore emotions and your inner mind.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after rewarding career in public health research. With graduate degree from Howard University, in seven years he's published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, and plays in 175 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Barnstorm, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Feral, Memoryhouse, Saw Palm, Stoneboat, Stonecoast, and Whitefish, with Glassworks and Phoebe forthcoming. Text-based photo-essays include Barren, DASH, Kestrel, Ilanot Review, Litro, NWW, Sweet, Typehouse, and Wordpeace. He recently wrote/acted in a one-act play and appeared in a documentary limited series broadcast internationally. Jim and family split time between city and mountains.