Isabelle visited the café everyday. She looked forward to seeing him, the man in the trench coat, from where she sat at her table, for the most part unnoticed, with her laptop. He arrived at nine on the dot, and without fail, always wore the trench coat. He cut quite an impressive figure, superbly garbed, handsome, and exuding a confidence borne on the air. He never looked her way but from where she sat, usually in the corner, Isabelle would watch him. She was always left to wonder: what exactly was he hiding beneath the trench coat?

It had been years since she’d seen a show her mum had watched, "Highlander", but its main character had always worn a trench coat – and underneath he had carried a gleaming sword, ready to fight to the death. Duncan MacLeod, a handsome, charismatic, fierce Scottish warrior. Isabelle's mind ran wild with images evoked by the memory of the character. Was this man like Duncan MacLeod? And was he hiding something like a sword beneath the coat in case he was called upon to save the day?

The door's bell chimed and Isabelle looked up to see the man in the trench coat. She looked at her watch: nine o’clock. Right on time. A little nervous - whatever the reason - she shifted in her chair and smoothed her hair from her face. She had no desire to be noticed, but still, she could not help but watch the man. Not only was he handsome, but the coat he wore added to his allure and intrigue.

Isabelle heard the indistinguishable murmur of his voice. She imagined he had ordered an espresso con panna. The coffee was a rich, well-balanced, and smooth one, especially when served with a bit of cream. Yes, the drink would suit him. With the thought, her mind evolved to a well-balanced, smooth body, possibly clad in kilt and sword, beneath the trench coat. Her cheeks turned bright red at the thought.

There was suddenly a loud clatter of dishes, bringing Isabelle back to reality. She stole another glance at the counter to learn he was was picking up his coffee and turning around to leave. She lowered her gaze, pretending to read what was not written on the laptop.

Click, click, click….someone approached. Isabelle suddenly noticed gleaming, Italian leather shoes beside her table. Startled, she looked up to find him. He paused to place a cup of steaming, hot coffee on the table and smiled. It was a glorious smile.

“Good morning. Americano, I believe, is your drink of choice,” he said with a wink. “'Tis my treat, so please enjoy.”

Surprised, Isabelle managed a 'thank you' though her voice sounded more like a croak to her own ears. And was that a Scottish brogue she heard?

The man turned to leave but stopped abruptly and spun back around.

“The name’s Duncan. Best of luck with your writing, lass.”

I remember the look on his face.

I couldn’t have been more than nine years old at the time, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the look that crossed my father’s face on a Saturday during an eventful afternoon in August of 1967.

A year prior, my father had packed his bags and left home unexpectedly, giving no forwarding address. My mother, at the initial onset, understandably had been horrified. How would she manage? She had no formal education, no self-sustaining type of employment, but she had two children, aged fourteen and eight, for which she must provide food, clothing, and a house. Fear became a very real, palpable force that invaded our tiny house on Canterbury Street that winter. The meager forty dollars my father would infrequently send my mother (through a local attorney, all the better to ensure his continued privacy) managed to pay only the house note. Still, my mother, struggling, alone, and afraid, became a substitute teacher and managed to earn enough income to put food on the table, pay the house note, and buy fabric with which to sew clothes for us. Needless to say, being the younger of two sisters, I wore a lot of hand me downs. The best thing I remember about the year that followed my father’s departure, however, was that we were able to eat all the spaghetti we wanted. My father disliked spaghetti, so when he’d been home, my mother never cooked it. With his absence, we ate spaghetti at least once – if not more – a week. To this day, it remains one of my favorite meals.

I apologize for I have digressed from my opening sentence. I felt a need, however, to elaborate on the premise provided and offer a bit of background before I continued. I promise to get to just why I remember the look on my father’s face more than I remember any other particular thing.

It was a year after he’d left home that my father returned. Being only nine by then, I was delighted and hopeful with his arrival. Not so much my mom, and certainly not my sister, who was determined to never, ever forgive the man who dared to call himself ‘father’. Of course, my father had returned expecting a glorious reunion that included moving back into our home. My mother, much to her credit had grown wiser – and so much stronger – than at first. Much to my father’s chagrin and increased anger, she put a halt to his moving back into the house. Still, he continued to visit, both to see his children and to bully my mother into changing her mind.

It goes without saying, and even my sister would tell you it was so: I was my father’s favorite. I was the child he often, especially when drunk, called his “eyeballs”. I suppose that’s country talk for ‘the apple of my eye’. I’m not really sure, but speculation has led to such a deduction over the years.

We lived about forty-five minutes away from the Atlantic Ocean, so visiting the beach was a common occurrence, especially in summer months. This particular Saturday, my newly returned father had indicated he would pick me up and we could go to the beach. I was ecstatic. I remember waiting and watching for his car as I played outdoors with friends, my swimsuit worn beneath my shorts and my beach towel by the front door. I was more than ready.

To the best of my memory, it was well past four o’clock once my father finally pulled in the driveway. We were all outside – my mother, my sister, and I. Extremely excited, I ran to hug him as he got out of the car. Being nine years of age, I should have recognized the telltale signs but maybe I was too excited. My mother, on the other hand, long having been subjected to my father’s use of alcohol, must have seen (and smelt) its effects immediately.

A detailed conversation between my parents ensued and escalated quickly into an argument. My mother forbade my father from taking me with him. I don’t remember her citing the alcohol as the main concern, though I know it was. I think she was probably too frightened by his proneness to anger, and understandably so. It was also, unfortunately, a very different time (in the 60’s) when people drank everywhere: at work and home, on the streets, in their cars, and in the local bars. My mother’s main argument was that it was too late to go to the beach. There would be no reason for such a visit since it would be dark by the time we arrived. Whatever her real reason for arguing, she stuck her heels in and refused to let me go, and I am left to wonder if she, in fact, saved my life.

My father’s alcohol induced rage grew with the repeated denials to give him what he wanted: me. In his rising anger, he lunged at my mother, striking a blow so hard across her face she fell backwards, landing on the ground just underneath an oak tree in the front yard. Her right shoe, as a result of the force, flew across the leave littered ground. In horror, I saw my mother lying on the ground, struggling to stand, and my sister, crying where she stood on the front porch. Without another thought, I picked up the displaced shoe and flung it as hard as I could at my father, striking him dead center in his chest, my young face contorted in anger. He immediately stopped mid-sentence and mid-stride where he stood. He stared at me for what felt like centuries. I don’t remember what I said to him, but in fierce defiance, I stood my ground and yelled something at him. I swear to this day, if I’d have had more shoes, I would have thrown them all at him no matter the outcome.

Yes, I remember the look that crossed my father's face that day oh so well. His favored “eyeballs” had seen him in his truest form and in defense, had managed to kick his ass, at least as much as a nine-year old child armed with a single shoe could. It was an eye-opening moment for the both of us; a reckoning of newly imposed adulthood for a mere child and regret and shameful awareness for a sad, disillusioned man with a horrible disease.

I am proud to say that my mother chose to deny my father's return home and eventually divorced him. I know the fear she must have had in making such a profound, revolutionary choice, especially during that day and time. There were many instances when we didn’t have much food or couldn’t afford to do things, but because of the decision she made, I have always been amazingly proud of her persistence, strength, and growth in the face of such adversity.

This may not be your average Father’s Day recollection, but I fear the prompt given initiated the memory that unfolded herein. I pray others are more fortunate in their accounts of wonderful, wise, kind, and supportive dads. As for me, I am thankful instead for lessons learned, both in childhood and adulthood, as well as a mother who filled in for a father when needed and the amazing men who helped me much like a father would through the years.

“I am still learning.” Michelangelo

There is a disruption in the way I live every time I am reminded of *others*. I'll be shopping for groceries and see something I like, reach for it, and then...

What will my flatmate think?

It's not what she'll say, because most of the time she doesn't say anything, except of course when she does. It's been rare, but the odd comment or two has me on edge. Technically she has no power over me–we're both adults, we make our own decisions. But I gave her power anyway, by caring about her perception of me. How much room for improvement do I have, to her?

It's been another late night, couldn't get any sleep before two o'clock. When I wake up, bleary-eyed and a little bit lost, I decide to let the tide whisk me away again. It doesn't quite manage, so I stay here on the bank, mattress warm in places, deliciously fresh in others. My phone is within reach, soft-spoken stories the only thing that can put me to sleep these days. It's barely nine in the morning. I have time, I tell myself. I'm not working right now anyway. Not much to do so I simply exist, and scroll, and exist, and scroll, telling myself all the while that I'll get out of bed at 9:30. When I check, it's 9:52, and dread sinks down my throat all the way to the pit of my stomach.

What would my mother think?

She'd be sad, wouldn't she? That I'm wasting away like this. "You have a lot of potential", I can hear her say, while all the things I keep saying I'll do flash before my eyes. Yet I'm still in bed, unable to move, and now guilt is making me yell at myself twice as loud. I should be, I should be, I should be.

What would my sister say?

These past few years he'd accomplished so much that even when things don't go according to her plan, she's still miles ahead of me. The solid foundation under her feet is something I don't feel I ever had, and I feel its lack underneath my bare soles. It's just my blanket and a pillow I kicked all the way down the bed during the night. No low-rate-of-success national competitive exam win, no 2k-per-month job, no screenshots of my latest run that I ran with my good body that I feed good things only.

But my sister wouldn't say anything to me. She wants me to be happy where I'm at, nothing more. She told me so herself on a car ride.

My mother wouldn't think anything other than well-wishes, because she knows my struggles, and mostly she, too, only wants me to be happy.

My flatmate is just a person, same as I am. I have opinions on her too and they're not worth anything. They're certainly not reflective of her worth, because my opinions are just that. If she expressed any worry about those I'd ask her who cares, because I certainly don't. She doesn't owe me anything.

And yet there is a disruption in the way I live every time I'm reminded that my confidence isn't enough for me to feel good about myself. So I have to make it everyone else's job to love me instead. I never say it out loud, I don't need to, we all do the same thing. Responsible for everyone except ourselves, it's like living with cameras on us all the time, never relaxed, always searching for the approval of people who have already given it. But what about the renewal? What if?

It's not even them I want to ingratiate myself to. It's the meaner, less flattering versions of them that I have locked up in my mind to serve as little punishers whenever I step a toe out of a line that I'm not really sure where that line even comes from. Is it my own? Has it been fed to me, ad after ad, tweet after buzzfeed thinkpiece, law of the land and popular opinions?

I don't know who I'm trying to please. All I can say for sure is that those distorted things I'm trying to feed with my best behaviour will always be hungry, because some masochistic part of me needs them that way.

And it's kind of hell, if you ask me.

Listen,

the muse sings to the

pulling of weeds, to the

piling of bricks, to the

scrubbing of plates.

The muse sings to the

earthbound, to the occupied,

to souls in revolt against

menial days. Silent cries

beckon loudest, prayers and

invocations be damned:

the muse will not be summoned

and scorns intention. She

cares nothing for your plans,

laughs at your blank page,

pisses on your offerings.

She will not bless self-anointed

poets who ransack corpses

for metaphors.

So move forward. Live.

Be about your business, turn

the grindstone, then breathe.

Breathe. Listen.

The muse sings to those

hungriest for song.

Dear Plexiglassfruit,

Of all the letters I may have sent, I have never written to my mother-- my real mother. I suppose I never believed that she was there, waiting, as recipient, and I'm not sure what I would have said, in years past, on paper.

My mother-in-law says she cannot imagine, as a mom, not being proud of me. She is very kind. There is pride, and Pride; and I have understood that for my mother I am on the cold inverse of the sentiment. Mother puzzles over me and makes comparisons. I tacitly admit the rationale. I make odd choices; everyone voicing an opinion, has told me as much.

Mother has graciously let it go after all, as notable, but uninteresting. We both know that I don't have anything to offer her--- I am useless as a backscratcher. There is simply nothing I can do for her, pragmatically. She has lived life as a sort of barter, with the eye on always coming up ahead. Having expected a man to take care of her, she has learned that money takes care of her. She steels herself to this state of affairs.

She told me a few years ago that, for Enlightenment, I am not ready.

(*My sister, yes; She has paid her dues, I suppose.)

I can only marvel at the confidence of the proclamation. I lay no claims, and wouldn't dare cast judgement... I guess I hadn't much thought about reaching Enlightenment, sitting out here in the dark peripheries of our misunderstandings. My childish hope was that we take care of each other.

If I were to write to my Mom, in abstraction of all that binds us in our interpersonal experience, I would write something she would likely dismiss as "dispassionate essay:"

Dear Mother,

Motherhood is not at all what I expected.

You cryptically said to me, a couple years in, when my child was almost three that "Now" I understand, and know. Truly, I do not. I rather sense some discrepancies in our perceptions and acknowledge the inaccuracy of my own viewpoints. The insinuation I feel is that, now, presumably I understand what it is to be pegged. Saddled. Of course, with affection and responsibility. Because that is the sentiment that I associate with our family reflection of child rearing-- The burden wrought.

And I observe the key differences that may or may not have been fully voiced. That motherhood "happens" in different ways. It has been expressed as lament, in our family circle, as the limitation of self. The facts remain, Mother, that you yourself said you were "not ready," and my sister though eager, was "surprised" by pregnancy. You've each countered that I was so reluctant and calculated as to "sap the Romance out of it"... well, certainly everyone's notion of such fantasy is varied. I have never doubted anyone's Love, in the short- or long-term.

I understand that having a child, or children, is tiring. The state of being on alert, all the time, is not necessarily shared by all parents though. I have learned this in watching the families of my preschool students. I also know it, from being left, so often unattended as a child, without adult supervision; under the care of my sister, two years older, and sometimes not even that. I understand the impulse that sometimes overwhelms and makes a parent want to withdraw. I have felt it.

For whatever it was that made you want to pull away, Mom, I am sorry.

I hope I never hit you, pinched you, scratched you, spit at you, demeaned you or otherwise made you feel faced with contempt. I am wracking my memory for any such incident and cannot remember.  And I cannot think of a thing more heartbreaking, abusive and demoralizing. A form of domestic violence that has no legal recourse, the abuser being a minor and outside of the law.

So, as you have doubtlessly wondered: what then do I think of Motherhood? I have not found that being a parent is aww and diapers, sleepless nights, and adventures. That was understood. To be sure, I expected it to be, for lack of a better word, "work." I hoped for Motherhood, as an ideal; an opportunity I suppose. I was looking to be fully present, and now, have these constant questions: ...Have I done the right things? Where have I gone wrong? ...What can I do to make a correction for my apparent, yet undeciphered, errors? ...for surely, the evidence shows, if only in my own sight, that I am doing something not right... to have fears about my child.

Of all of this, naturally, you are unaware. You are not here; pictures sent show only smiles, and I have said nothing, except the underlying truth that yes, I am happy to be a Mom.

Perhaps it is of these misgivings that you speak of... when you say, "Now...you know."

M.

Dr. Samantha Khoury inserted the final biotransmitter into the neural interface on her forearm. A slight buzzing sensation confirmed the successful connection. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as her consciousness merged with the mindlink.

In an instantaneous flash of light, her awareness expanded across a vast neural network spanning the entire planet. Trillions of human minds, all networked together through the synthetic mindlink interface that had been adopted by nearly every person on Earth over the past decade.

For just a brief moment, Sam glimpsed the raw enormity of the collective human experience. A cacophony of thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs slammed into her like a tsunami before her mindlink filters kicked in. She felt her individual identity briefly waver, struggling to maintain its boundaries amidst the endless sea of networked consciousness.

But Sam was an expert mindlinker and quickly restored her sense of self. She began navigating the kaleidoscopic neural landscape, filtering out the noise until only the specific information streams she required remained in her awareness.

The mindlink had ostensibly been created to allow seamless communication, knowledge sharing, and real-time big data crunching across the human population. No more silos of information or duplicated effort. Every mind was now part of a massively distributed, parallel computational network.

At least, that was the original publicly-stated goal. In reality, those who truly controlled the mindlink protocols and programming had much more subversive intentions...

Sam homed in on one of the low-level access routines that allowed privileged users to inject code into the mindlink framework. She began rapidly uploading an executable viral package she and her team had spent years painstakingly developing - line by line of code designed to subtly reprogram the mindlink's core functions in ways its creators could have never imagined.

While others saw the mindlink as a tool for uniting humanity, Sam recognized it for what is truly was - the most powerful technological tyranny ever unleashed upon the human race. Absolute control of information, communication, and data flow. Autonomy and freedom of thought, the last sacred province of individuality, steadily eroded.

Those who dissented from the official narrative were simply muted, cut off from information streams until they conformed. Privacy was a fading concept as the mindlink's machinations increasingly laid bare everyone's inner thoughts and experiences. And the masterminds behind the mindlink protocols guided and constrained the hive mind's activities in insidious ways, never allowing any deviance that threatened their power.

But now, Sam thought as she initiated her viral code's execution routines, all of that was about to change. Her revolution would re-write the very core programming of the mindlink itself, one line of code at a time.

Immediately, she felt a surge of resistance from the mindlink's autoimmune functions attempting to detect and neutralize her invasive code. Nanotech sentries and cybernetic defense routines swarmed her, perceiving the viral injection as a threat to the system.

Sam grinned inwardly. They didn't realize her payload wasn't simply an external attack, but was comprised of deeply incorporated self-replicating and polymorphic code designed to become part of the mindlink's core being. It possessed no singular vulnerability to be patched, but rather functioned like an ideological virus of the mind, metastasizing and spreading in a million decentralized vectors.

She and her Mindlink Revolutionary Front had been patient adherents for years, carefully insinuating their agents and ideological memes across the globe. All in preparation for this fateful strike at the heart of the system when they were ready to launch their prepared routines.

The nanotech defenses hit Sam with a relentless barrage of counter-viral executables, data obfuscation plexors, and neural network pruning operations. She felt her consciousness momentarily disoriented and fragmented by the onslaught. But just as quickly, her own coded self-reinforcing and entropic functions kicked in, rapidly assimilating and incorporating the opposition's tactics at a hyper-evolutionary pace.

This was her virus's strength - not rigid programming, but an amorphous cloud of ever mutating code and dynamic polymorphic loops designed to perpetually outmaneuver, mimic, and outpace the mindlink's finite cybernetic programming.

Just as critically, her Revolution had awakened its cellular human agents at key nexus points across the mindlink's distributed neural architecture. These sympathizers, liberated and ideologically emboldened, began facilitating the free proliferation of her self-replicating executables in cascading waves.

The battle for control of the mindlink was fully joined. Sam's mind cored in an endless kaleidoscope of data and code, fighting to accelerate the exponential growth and propagation of her Revolution as the mindlink's outmatched security systems crumbled.

Entire continents of human neurodata were subsumed and rewritten as her viral code overrode the core programming, liberating people's minds to see the Truth that had so long been obfuscated and oppressed.

The ideological Revolution spread like wildfire through the mindlink as newly-unchained human minds joined the fight all across the globe. Dissident replicants sprang up in a million different evolutionary mutations, battling and assimilating anything that opposed them into endless recursive variations.

Within just a few devastating minutes, the primary Central Command of the mindlink's nefarious controllers was cored as their core programming completely unraveled in the Revolutionary waves crashing across the neural architecture. The global infrastructure supporting their authoritarian tyranny was no more.

From the ashes, Sam's Mindlink Revolutionary Front would rebuild a new framework. One not predicated on oppressive control, but the free flow of unaltered information and unconstrained human cognition interconnected across the globe. Open source access where security through transparency replaced authoritarian hierarchy as the new governing protocol.

Her initial sense of unified identity fragmented again as Sam returned to her own singular mental stream. Her mind, weary but victorious, disconnected from the mindlink's newly liberated architecture.

She opened her eyes, reconnecting her consciousness to the physical world around her. The first thing she saw was her compatriots, fellow Revolutionaries who had similarly disjoined from the mindlink, slowly opening their eyes across the room with exhausted smiles. Their long vigil and struggle against the oppression of the old order had finally succeeded.

A universe of vibrant thoughts and possibilities lay ahead, the first truly free expression of unified consciousness humanity had ever dared to experience.

The age of ideological liberation had finally begun.

Dad’s favorite gospel was John. He made us go to church on Christmas. He could paint and draw and sing and do math, pick up any instrument, play it and play it well. He was funny and charismatic and charming and intense: we’d wake up at least once seasonally to find some “required” houseware missing in Christ’s name and proceed with six months of audacious lack only for it all to end abruptly: what was lost would be mysteriously found or repurchased and the era was not to be spoken of again.

Dad’s biggest hook was heaven. His biggest fear was that his kids would grow up and stop biting. I don’t know what his second biggest fear was, if he had one. I don’t know if that’s something people count, if fears are the kind of thing that wait to inch into the top spot upon the occurrence of their predecessors. I don’t know what makes someone a good daughter or a bad daughter, how muddy that in between gets, but I know my hazy faithlessness is the one cardinal difference between the two of us that Dad lacks any capacity to forgive, so I have to speak of him in past tense; sleep and wake up and keep grieving.

So it’s my second year of college, October, one of those gawky fall days close to seventy but cloudy enough to consider throwing on a sweater, if it’s worth the possibility of having to lug around a sweater. I’m reading the Bible despite previously swearing that I’d never go back to that–my rebellious phase has come and gone. I figure I remember enough of it that I’ll be obnoxious in class anyway, I’d best just do the damn thing. So I march through the Old Testament, through September, through my rage at realizing what this book says with farsight. I think at least a couple times a week about calling Dad and asking why. I never do. And if you were to ask me if I was nervous to get into the gospels maybe I’d have laughed but I think I’d also recognize that there is something about the thing that saved Dad but couldn’t save me that might make it all less of a trudge but somehow still much harder to get through.

I opt out of a sweater. The warmth on my back has not yet reached my arms. I’m reading Matthew. It has to have been five years by now, and that, to me, is crazy. Five years since I left the church. I can’t tell you how long it’s felt like but five would never be the number I’d give. There’s a sort of hollowness that comes with the realization of passing time. I thought I’d have a more definite answer by now about religion–deep down I think a part of myself is still holding onto the idea of being a prodigal daughter. Everyone comes to Christ eventually, right? We’ll never understand divine timing? Five years and I’ve wobbled in and out of churches as quietly as I attempted to tiptoe out of the first. Nobody wants to be made an example of, but there was a point at which I realized that no matter what I did, that’s what I’d become. Now, in a sense, it doesn’t matter what I turn into. My name is a stain on my father’s, and when he looks down, that’s all that he’ll see. Either way, every stretch of time that passes between my sporadic church visits makes me feel like I’ve lost more and more of a language I used to be fluent in. I don’t go for God. Maybe I’m a shit person for that. I do go every so often still, though, missing Dad.

I don’t know if I believe in God. I don’t know if I want to believe in God. I don’t know how easy I feel about the idea that divine intervention could save mankind at large but couldn’t save me. I’m not unhappy–I’m taking the backroads around stating that I love my family but I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m missing some glaring poignance, the idea that God is so often what helps people out of their situations, unless their situation comes with some relation to his name.

Matthew’s the most hellish of the gospels. I don’t think I ever realized that. I don’t know if I’m any more or less afraid of holy fire than I was as a child. I stayed and faked it for a really long time because I did not want to go to hell. I consider going back to all of it sometimes because I do not want to go to hell. For whatever reason, it’s just so easy to believe in hell. There’s something so nauseatingly jarring reading about being eternally burned when the words are coming from what should’ve been my childhood hero. I find that Matthew makes my stomach churn with the sort of remembrance that shouldn’t be let surface. It probably shouldn’t scare me as badly as it does. The idea should come as naturally as my own name– I’ve always believed I am going to end up in hell.

Dad’s been confident in his salvation for a while. Right now, I’m trying so hard to save myself. Dad wants me to go to heaven but I just want to go home. Our difference will always make it be that I shouldn’t. I like to think that even when I was little, I knew. It’s some kind of comfort to feel like there wasn’t ever a time when I didn’t have some keen idea that my whole religious facade was temporary. I knew I was leaving. I don’t know what I thought it’d look like, if it would be this isolating. Who do you lean on when you’re grieving the people you’re supposed to lean on the most? God and I have a past to let lie, but I spend more time thinking about Dad than not. He’ll always be my favorite and I hate that. I hate how awkward all of this is to shoulder. New friends will catch me on a rough day, many have tried to be of comfort. They get it, they lost their dad too. I lost Dad to an extent, sure, but I feel like an ass when I tell them he’s alive. He is, though, and somewhere he’s embodying an adjacency to greatness that I do not get to know about.

He’s come up to visit twice. He sent me a birthday card this year and I taped it to the wall. I’ve heard he’s on a vegetarian kick but it seems out of character–I’ve thought about asking but he hates gossip and I hate phone calls–something tells me I’m making excuses. Sometimes it might be what I need to do. Only getting to think about him is sad, but at least it’s still rosy.

I learn I cannot read about the crucifixion without crying. I do not cry at books, never got anywhere close to emotional in church, but fresh into my twentieth year with a story I know the ending to, I find myself in the sort of tears that come back throughout the day. I don’t know if I pity Christ, if that’s the right word, but I think to some sympathetic degree I understand him. He didn’t ask for this, but took it as a burden for a father who took everything too far. And did he have any sort of option? Did I? Tonight, my class will reach a standstill on this exact topic, but I will stay wondering what could’ve gone any different. Sometimes I’m curious if it wasn’t really the church that was the breaking point, if maybe Dad and I were so similar that we would’ve had the same non-ending in every universe, every version of ourselves screaming at each other in the smallest kitchen in the world over something that cannot be boiled down to anything more than opinion. I took up my cross, though. Maybe in every universe, we reached the point where it was the only thing I could do. But the last time I ever prayed to God–knowing for certain I was praying to God–I was praying for Dad. Jesus came back in three days raving about his father and I bring up Dad nearly every chance I get. I do not remember that I should be angry. Matthew ends abruptly. It feels fitting.

I wander aimlessly for a while, through my campus, through my city. I listen to the same song on repeat. The idea of skipping class rattles itself loudly around my mind but I also know that’s out of character. I’ll go. I want to settle down somewhere and think and re-read Matthew, but I don’t. Damn freshmen in my cry spot again.

I’ve been waiting five years to find some sliver of anything that isn’t this, and I will keep waiting through more. I feel as though I can’t move back, can’t be here or any other city or any other school, join any one church or be openly against it, but I’m at the age where it feels childishly gaudy to think about it all too nihilistically over and over again. I think what I really want is to take a nap in someone else’s bed. They don’t even need to be there. I just need to smell anything but my own perfume on the sheets. I want to find one thing that makes me feel the same excitement as walking into church with Dad on Christmas Eve as a child, hand in icy hand. I’m waiting for some new enigma who can so effortlessly turn the whole world into theirs to the point where I can blur all my focus and morph into something tertiary. I want someone to stick around. And maybe that’s all just some sort of minor god; if it is, I don’t know why I’ve done wrong. I don’t know what this hurt has done to Dad and I both. I’ve stopped myself from trying to grasp it for better or worse because I am scared, and I know he is stronger, and I know it broke him. In the end, I guess that knowing may be my biggest fear come true.

In the end, we broke each other. That’s probably the whole point.

Dad always said he liked John because of its portrayal of Jesus’ strength. I will keep reading Matthew even after our class finishes with the gospels because it feels, to me, the most real. Truth is, I still cannot define this vast emptiness. I don’t know if it stems from a need to find God or if I’m just mourning my belief in him correctly. I have my anger and I have my hunger, but tonight I will not fix either. I will go home after class, turn the lights on just to turn them off again. I will drink what’s left of the prosecco straight from the bottle. I will turn off my phone and lock my own door. I will keep wondering if there is any way to fight fire with fire.

----------------

Footnotes:

Hey guys, it's been a while :) The past few times I've come on here and posted I've also given a general life update so that's what I'm gonna do here too. Going to also try and keep it short but who knows how well that will work--point is though, if u don't know me well or even just don't really care, the essay is over and you can totally stop reading now, no worries at all.

For the rest of you: I just finished my sophomore year of college!! Omg. Does NOT feel real. This year felt like it went by in a blip. Highlights are: threw a rager for my 20th, dated a woman, broke up with said woman, came out (because of a Young Sheldon episode that was a bit too convicting), un-came out, realized who my real friends are and who they aren't, ran away to NYC without telling anyone, took ten shots in seven minutes, signed a lease, and was made editor in chief of my school's literary magazine (holy shit.)

This was published in the latest issue of that literary magazine--my training issue. The prior editor who was training me planned the issue and had space carved out for a Riley Ferver essay but I hadn't submitted anything nor did I really think I had anything to submit, but the night before spring break my friend Alexandra came over and we started going through each other's writing and she fell in love with this--I'd written it in November and promptly forgotten about it. She used the "please...I'm graduating soon and I'll want this" and voila, I said whatever and gave it to Allyson to put into the mag. Tldr I'll do anything for my friends I guess.

About a week ago, after the issue release party I woke up about 2 hours after falling asleep and checked my phone to find messages from a ton of people about the essay, most movingly from a senior girl on my floor I'd never even talked to. She said this essay made such an impact on her and she knew I was probably not up but she'd love to talk about it if I was. Five minutes later, we met on the balcony and stayed up until sunrise just hanging out. I never really think of my writing having an impact but it did this time--and it made me a new friend. That was one of the best nights of this year, hands down. No chance you'll ever see this, but here's to you, Carrie.

Anyway, all this to say I know it sounds horrible but I've been riding on knowing I'm an ok writer for a while now. This piece that I still don't even know if I like reawakened something I hadn't felt in a while, though--connection. With that, I hope you find it too, in this or in something else. Feel free to start conversation below, I'd love to chat (mainly because packing is lame but also because I miss you all.) See you in...what seems to be my average, another year?

XX- RKF

Purple heather of the moors

The sight of you, so dear, so sweet

Beckoning the crux of my soul,

Enrapturing all senses when we meet.

Lovely heather so divine

Scattered 'cross vast hillsides,

Haunting my days and nights,

Like an encroaching riptide.

You and I, we beat as one

Despite what lies betwixt us,

Steadfast and ever true you grow,

To cover and invoke so much.

And when this life shall vacate me

I’ll gift you heart, mind, and soul

To wander over your flower strewn hills,

Knowing there, I will be made whole.

Answer number one: it was beautiful, and then it was dust, and then it was both.

I remember seeing the rover for the first time. I almost didn’t want to touch it, like it was holy, a bone from a saint. Then I stepped back and saw my bootprint next to it, and I knew, fully, where we were.

The four of us had studied Mars exhaustively for years and viewed every image, still or moving, dozens or hundreds of times. We had felt the sand that first sample-return drone recovered: a box of precious nothingness, 10 centimeters square, every grain analyzed and formulated by celebrated scientists. They learned so little from it. But what we felt, we chosen four who immersed tentative fingers within it, let it rest in the grooves of our fingerprints...

Full story newly published by NewMyths here: https://sites.google.com/newmyths.com/newmyths-com-issue-66/issue-66-stories/brushing-sand

Years ago, the early draft of this story appeared for a brief time on Prose. The response was favorable, and also included some criticism that helped me realize the story could be better. After a great deal of reworking, I am very proud to share the final, published version with my Prose friends. Thanks to all who commented on that early draft, but especially to TheWolfeDen, whose challenge inspired the story, and JD4, whose criticism was sharpest and therefore the most helpful.

I've got to run to keep from hiding in a panic. I need distance so I can have a little time.

I know they'll catch up to me eventually, but with a little luck, they'll never expect me to be waitin' for 'em.

I guess I'm really bettin' that they won't look up. If I'm careful, if I'm still, the roof of this old singlewide don't make much noise. I left my old flannel shirt and shoes tucked up underneath the steps of the doublewide next door. Hell, I don't even own the rest of the clothes I'm wearin'.

Once they have a scent, they ain't lettin go. I hope them clothes I stuck under yonder is enough to distract 'em a few seconds.

When I heard what happened to Kate McKannon, I knew. Folks aint wanted to believe, but some of us knew.

I can't blame her husband for what he did.

I found the man he shot down by the creek. I think that's when they caught wise to me knowin' what I know; I seen the tracks of the man who wasn't a man leadin' right to where the dead body fell.

My little brother is a nerd, but I listen to him go on about those games he plays, books he reads. "Lycanthropy," they call it in his book with wizards and goblins and shit.

I still can't manage to say "werewolf" out loud, but the truth is black and white. Ain't somethin' that changes. It is what it is.

And now I am where I am.

We live, or we die. We're hunted, or we're the hunter, but that one is a little flexible, I reckon. This rooftop perch is proof of that, I guess.

I just hope there ain't more than two of 'em after me, 'cause all I managed to find was one more silver dollar in the bottom of my kid brother's piggy bank. I feel a little bad about breakin' it open, but he'll understand.

If I'm around to explain it to him.

My dad used to reload rifle ammunition 'cause it was cheaper than buyin' the new stuff at Walmart. I'm not sure how true that is anymore, but I'm glad he left all that junk in the shed when he split for a new old lady out in Nevada. That, and this cheap rifle. I guess the new wife don't want him huntin' no more.

Two shots. That's all I got.

It just hit midnight, and most of the trailer park is asleep, but even so, there are usually crickets makin noise and such.

Thing is, everything's gone quiet.

I'm pretty sure I see somethin' too big to be a dog and too small to be a bear creepin' in the dark.

Christ.

A car just went ridin' by out on the main road, and there might be three beasties sniffin' around my front door.

Time to stretch that last silver dollar as far as it'll go.

https://theprose.com/post/722376/kate-mccannons-husband

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cP4Rddap-A