"Margaret" by Robert Wilson

I wait in the pickup/drop off area listening for the warning bell from the South Shore Limited
from Chicago. Small birds the color of clouds balance on the rails, rust collecting on their toes,
three pointing forward, one pointing back. The birds startle as the train floats to a stop like a
funeral procession for momentum, then commuters, scholarship Catholics, and my daughter,
descend. She carries a Fair Trade Bag and wears a pewter Christmas necklace made of two
crossed swords, and sat facing the wrong way so all she could see was the past. My mother died
three late nights and one dawn after my daughter was born. They are both named—one, then the
next—Margaret. A woman of that same name lived inside a dragon seven hundred years ago and became one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Most railroad crossings are uncontrolled, a matter of chance for all who pass. We should be grateful to have a limited body, like mine, like yours.

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Robert Wilson is a writer whose poems have most recently appeared in Welter and SoFLoPoJo. His poem Dolphin Tour was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023 and his poem Spring Tide was the 2024 winner of the Water to Words contest sponsored by the Seneca (New York) Park Zoo Society. He lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida.

"ASH" by Elizabeth Benge

Do you remember the night you shattered?
The floor outside her room was littered
with debris—gloves and masks and empty
vials, remnants of the war you lost.
They took her body away and left you,
staring at your own hands. She was young and pregnant, you said,
as if that alone could summon her back,
as if that one fact could erase
the hours you spent inside that room,
chasing her heartbeat with desperate fingers
until there was nothing left to catch. The Delta surge had us all burning.
You were untouchable,
a stone in the storm, the doctor
we all looked to when our hands shook.
But you stood there hollow-eyed,
cracked open and emptied out.
And I saw how easily it could happen to me. The next morning, you were gone.
I kept waiting for you to come back,
to fill the eye at the center
of the chaos, but your pager lay silent
on the counter, and your name stayed dark
on the schedule, a hole that widened
with every shift. I didn’t want to be you.
But the patients kept coming,
their lungs filling like waterlogged boats,
their eyes searching for anyone
who could promise they'd float.
I stepped into your storm
one trembling foot at a time,
and the weight wrapped me
like a second skin. There was no time to wonder
if I was ready, if I could be
what they needed. I knew what
awaited me. I had watched it
erode in your hands, felt
its shadow cross my heart. This work is a quiet violence,
a tender, brutal unraveling.
To hold each life sacred,
to lose it anyway, and to keep going
with blood-stained sleeves,
knowing all too well
that one day, I might split open
just like you did. Still, I put on my mask,
my gloves, my shield. I steady
my hands, quiet the shaking,
stand at the bedside of the next
and the next, facing down the ghosts
that press like fog against the walls.

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Lizzie Benge is a sleep medicine physician, first-year attending, and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Lizzie writes about the intersection of medicine and humanity, capturing the quiet, powerful moments that reveal the resilience of patients and doctors alike.

Four Poems by Lauren Arienzale

simple

to live one hundred years
in a quarter of the time

and still savor tomorrow

that is my gift

containing

and here i am,
spilling the confetti of my psyche
wild and colorful and violently messy
on the floor of your office

and here you are,
calling my chaos wonderful
and holding up my madness
with the upmost care

queer experience

the words leave your mouth
how i imagine
fire must spread

it is an ember of good intentions
and then
a forest fire of twisted holiness

because you say, “i’ll pray for you,”
but really mean,
“we’ll never meet in heaven.”

bloodline

the day you died
i stood by the body
while they cried and prayed and argued

the plague was only in its first summer
then, and i was foolishly hopeful

wishing on shooting stars in the backyard
and begging the solar system to make me braver.

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Lauren Arienzale is a cat mom, doctoral student in clinical psychology, former organic farmer, and lifelong poet. She is the author of the independently published poetry collection, "Mud Pie.” Her work has also appeared in Scapegoat Review, The Closed Eye Open (Maya’s Micros), and A Plate of Pandemic. Check out her website: laurenarienzale.com

"untitled for baths" by Emma Durbin

I used to run into the woods and sing with the trees.
I used to return home, run the tap, and steam my problems away.
I used to love baths.

Now I have a cheap tub,
aged caulk,
too many roommates,
and an aching block of anxiety across my chest.

I used to love baths.
But now all I can do is shower and remember:
That outdoor rain-head in Italy
with the lemon shampoo
and my almost private view of Vesuvio.

But now all I can do is shower and remember:
That hot tub in Washington,
open and under the stars.

But now all I can do is shower and daydream: A hot spring.
Bright and colorful lights dancing above our heads.
The taste of sweat and rain and forest on your breath.
Wishing it was me there, with you.

---

Emma Durbin (they/them) is a Chicago-based playwright, poet, dramaturg, and theatre producer. Their writing often centers women and people who are experiencing gender marginalization, and the bonds they form in search of survival, community, and joy. Plays in development include: landscape (workshopped at Mirrorbox Theatre and Valdez Theatre Conference, 2022 Premiere Play Festival semi-finalist, 2024 Irons in the Fire at Fault Line Theatre semifinalist, 2023 NAP Series at Normal Ave finalist, and 2023 LAB Series at The Inkwell Theater finalist), Witchcraft, Bitchcraft (2022 commission by Pocket Theatre VR), and overgrown (winter 2023 Jackalope Playwrights Lab). Emma is a co-founder and artistic producer of Freshly Brewed, a new play development series for emerging Chicago writers, produced by The Understudy Coffee and Books and fiscally sponsored by Raven Theatre. Emma attended the New Play Dramaturgy Intensive at the Kennedy Center with Mark Bly and has a BFA in Playwriting from The Theatre School at DePaul University Dean’s Prize Recipient). Please visit emmadurbin.com to learn more.

"The Last Night You Went Outside" by Wendy BooydeGraaff

You’ve always been a sleepwalker. I’d wake nights, the moon shining on our bed, on the rumpled indent where you were when I closed my eyes and leaned my head on your shoulder. At first, I’d get up, find you brushing your teeth in the kitchen, or packing a plastic bag in the living room: books, candles, playing card packets breaking through the thin grocery store logo. I’d discovered if I said anything, you’d grow agitated, you’d shake and become stiff in your refusal. Once, you hit me across the forehead when your arms swung wildly to grab back the wastebasket you were drinking from. The purple-yellow bruise from the watch you wore lasted days. I bought that cakey makeup to cover it up, though the social worker still came to our place, asked me uncomfortable questions. Why hasn’t he come back now, when I need him?

I began to ignore your nighttime travels. I’d lock my desk and hide the key. Everything else you’d put back in place when you awoke at noon. There’d be a few hours of normalcy in the evening and then we’d accidentally fall asleep. I’d stay in bed, sleep through whatever it was you did—you’d never remember, you were asleep. The rift between us grew. You were always leaving. You didn’t mean to, you said. How could I blame you, you said. How could I not? I said. You left. You kept leaving. Subconscious leaving is worse than physical. You didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand you.

The full moon came again, woke me up. How had I not heard the dead bolt unlock, the creak the door makes after the suction sound upon opening. I stood in the shadowed doorway, you stood in the beam on the sidewalk, looking down, fiddling. Then you lifted your arms straight up. I didn’t see how or where you went. You were gone. The beam was gone. I walked to the spot I had last seen you, crunched something under my feet. Your watch, the face splintered with embedded sidewalk grit. I carried it to our room, put it on the nightstand where it had never been because it was always on your arm. I slept on my side of the bed, expecting you back by morning, but the watch stayed there in its new place, as did you.

Wendy BooydeGraaff's short fiction, poems, and essays have been included in Stanchion, Slag Glass City, CutLeaf, Ninth Letter online, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.